I guess you have to have a certain critical mass to gin up a decent riot but it seems like these things occur disproportionately in large population centers. I could also see how media coverage will be greater when these things happen in New Orleans or LA than if they were to happen in Anytown USA.
I am mainly interested in the US since other cultures might skew the statistics in ways that might not be obvious. Hooliganism at football games in the UK or elsewhere in Europe would probably qualify as a riot for instance but I don’t know if they follow the teams from game to game etc… I’m really interested in one time events brought on by some stress to the community.
Lots more trashy people in cities than rural areas…more of the type that would tend to loot and engage in other illegal behavior. I think it is mostly demographics.
I live in a quasi-rural area and feel certain that some people would loot if they could get away with it. IMO what emboldens looters in cities is sheer numbers where the looters have stayed behind, and far outnumber police (or remaining property owners) in the affected areas. In rural areas there simply isn’t the population density to have a big crowd of looters made brave by their numbers.
Keep in mind alot of this could be out of neccesity. some of these people have no food/water/clothing. I can blame them for looting that stuff. DVDs and mp3 players on the other hand…
Alot of rural peopel probably would not have as much need to loot because they have adequate supplies, as they are not use to going to the stores as much.
I think opportunity plays a big role as well - the more urban the area, the more easily accessible, large-scale lootworthy stores there will be. If there’s nothing but JC Penny’s and a Radio Shack in the middle of town, they’ll be done and looted in minutes flat.
So was lynching.
And racialy motivated riots certainly do happen in cities.
And the Night of Broken Glass, in Germany, during the 30s, was a riot and a lynching and premeditated.
Not to sound condescending, but how could looting/rioting take place in a rural area? By definition, it’s spread out and pretty much empty. I know my mental picture of the creaky old general store isn’t nessecarily accurate, but I can’t imagine that anything worth looting would be considered rural.
It seems that one of the conditions that makes largescale looting possible is anonymity. In large population centers, that’s an easier thing to find. You are just another face. In rural or smaller town settings, that’s not as true.
I go to the grocery store, and one of the managers lives 3 doors down from me. I’m much less likely to loot, knowing that my neighbor is there, watching me do it. Someone the next block over is a paramedic. The ex-sheriff lives across the street. Someone’s teenage daughter works at the hardware store.
An uncle of mine purchased a neighboring farm, using the barns & sheds, but the old farmhouse was unoccupied.
It was soon stripped of everything of value, including windows, doors, doorknobs, electrical outlets & switches, plumbing, and, yes, even the kitchen sink.
Seems like that could be described as rural ‘looting’.
You beat me to it by two posts. What the hell is this guy on?
In response to rational parts of the thread: rioting by definition needs a group of people in a space which is in some way restricted. This situation rarely occurs outside of urban environments. The OP’s right to discount football violence, as this is more aptly regarded as gang rivalry. For a UK perspective, most of the serious occurences I can think of in the past couple of decades have mostly been directly related to race (where often a major factor is anger directed specifically towards the police), with a few political cases such as the poll tax riot.
The notion that rural folks are more honest and virtuous than city folks is, I think, a myth. My grandfather used to own a small farm in northeastern Oklahoma. He was constantly fending off thieves who stole produce from his fields, farming equipment, and livestock. Once when my grandpa returned to the farm after a brief stay in the hospital, he found that his little three-room farmhouse had been broken into, and all the furniture and appliances were gone. The thieves even took kids’ toys and a scrapbook full of family memorabilia.
I think you’re greatly underestimating rural people’s ability to be trashy. Please don’t fall for the salt of the earth fallacy. People are not rendered immaculate simply by moving to the country. People lie, cheat, run away with other people’s spouses, have questionable taste in lawn decoration, murder their girlfriends, etc. Alcoholism, rape, child abuse: it happens everywhere. Country bumpkins don’t exist. Pastoral comedies aren’t for real. There is no such thing as a good idiot! There are people around here I wouldn’t trust to guard a rump roast, and it’s not because they’re starving or lazy. This isn’t to say everybody’s a shifty-eyed weasel, but not everybody is exactly beatific. And since when did “trashy” become a demographic?
And I would truly love to see a reputable cite for this claim:
Regarding the OP, there are several abandoned farmhouses around here that were stripped of their fixtures within months of being abandoned. There are also annual warnings to farmers to guard or lock their anyhydrous ammonia (a fertilizer) tanks up, so the “lower element” doesn’t steal it to make meth. About ten years ago, we even had people growing marijuana on the edges of one of our cornfields, blending it in with the weeds and wild marijuana that were already there. While that isn’t traditional looting behavior, they were still stealing from us.