Protests around the world reflect social truths

It's interesting and valuable to compare the demonstrations in the UK, with similar break-outs in Malaysia and in the Middle East, all of which have emerged in the several last months.

While these case studies are all characterised by mobilised youth railing against a leadership they feel is ignoring them, each has a specific personality which says a lot not only about cultural approaches to protest, but to where each sits in relation to the materialist hierarchy manifested in the post-globalised world.

From the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to the Arab Spring (a misnomer as Iranians are also clamouring for change) and Tunisia, where the whole reform wave started.

There, a young man named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest at being denied access to street space for his vegetable stall. In light of the UK uprising, the nature of his extraordinary personal protest is telling. The difference between setting fire to oneself and setting fire to someone else's property should not be ignored.

The Arab Spring movement, while showing contempt for venal and corrupt leaders, has generally been characterised by a respect for social infrastructure. Protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square for instance set up their own mini-governments, organising street tidying teams once the sit-in had dispersed.

Elsewhere, things have turned nastier and in Libya and Syria for instance, civil war seems a not inappropriate term to use. But, in both cases, this direction was set by the reaction of authorities, not by a prevailing violent streak in the freedom movements themselves.

This basic respect for the social structure is reflected also in Malaysia.

In recent months, the Bersih2.0 movement has taken to the streets – using the now standard strategic triumvirate of Facebook, twitter and YouTube – to air their grievances over graft and various violations of the liberal, free market ideal.

Once again, it is evident there has been an underlying diffidence in relation to making a mark, and the belief that change can come only through peaceful means.

Turning back to England, where the violence is more provocative and the destruction more proactive than in any of the other examples around the world. Given that storefronts are being smashed, people are being accosted in restaurants and there is killing in the streets; the English protests have taken something of a different shape.

The disrespect for private or public property, the taunting of police and the ripples of savagery that these protests have displayed suggest a total disregard for social infrastructure.

One reason for that is because the infrastructure is weak or non-existent, at least not in terms of the Middle East or in Asia.

The three broad protest cultures, from the Middle East to Malaysia to the UK, reflect the progression of materialist society. In the Middle East, it is less entrenched. In Asia, more so, but less than in the West. In the UK, arguably the home of modern industrial capitalism, it is well anchored.

The assault on the system in the English demonstrations, as opposed to focusing on leaderships in MENA and in Asia, is an embodiment of the breakdown of the structures of community, self-respect and for social capital that still maintain a significant presence in the other protest centres.

To put it more succinctly, the arc between the burning of shops and cars as a means of protest and self-immolation is one that tracks the undermining of the familial, community-based society and its replacement with an individualist, materialist, consumer-based model.

At one end of the spectrum is personal responsibility and self-sacrifice. At the other is mindless greed and an externalising blame-the-other culture.

The English situation is the latest tilt on the critique of modern, materially-based societies identified by the social philosopher Emile Durkheim. He used the term "anomie" to describe the negative impact of individuals who feel alienated and de-socialised in industrial societies. It continues to hold relevance.

In each of these cases, protesters are acting out within the rules and formats set by their peers. Those where a semblance of social integration remains, calibrate their demonstrations to fit those parameters. Such is the case in MENA and in Malaysia. In England, those stepping out of department stores over shards of broken glass, carrying pilfered flat-screens are simply aping their older more established political and corporate peers who have set the standard on ripping off the community that supports them and with having the arrogance (and ability) to take what they want in a culture of institutionalised looting.

In each case those same leaders are now reaping the consequences of a social model they, and their precedents, have manufactured.

As such, attempts in each case to isolate the perpetrators, to cast the demonstrations as untethered to any deeper reality, or to seek to remove the responsibility of those in authority (going back decades) completely misses the point and smacks of PR spin rather than the sort of problem solving that these crises cry out for.

While every demonstration will have its share of nutters, all will be broadly reflective in their nature and personality of the society from which they emerge. If the nutters rise to the top of the scale, then this is likely to have already been the case in the wider social context.

In MENA, in Asia and now in the UK; the political, economic and social foundations built by culture and by elites and peer groups are cracking. This is nothing new. Every era, every generation, feels the need to fashion its own circumstance. We can only hope that what emerges across the world is a fairer, more equitable, more compassionate and more integrated milieu.