The Revolt Against Uncertainty

Abstract

But there were to be long-term consequences. The ravages and great cracks the neo-liberal mode of governance had caused to the social fabric had to be patched over if it was to be able to sustain itself. To this end, the security sanction had been able to perform this function, to a degree at least. But to allow this to happen, expert knowledge had to give way to populist common sense: ideas of safety and security and how these might be protected were likely to be based on newspaper headlines, angry voices on talkback radio and law and order lobbyists “full of sound and fury” (although usually “signifying nothing”) rather than considered social scientific inquiry. Nonetheless, as restructuring continued, the dam provided by the security sanction kept filling. Filling and filling. Filling continuously as social divisions widened still further, filling as tensions, uncertainties and anxieties caused by these divisions continued to increase. Filling and Filling. Eventually the dam proved insufficient to contain all this venom, toxicity and hostility. It started to overflow, spreading right across the social body, polluting and infecting all in its way. Those governments, especially those that had moved furthest down the track of restructuring and where levels of trust in the central state were also in sharp decline, found that the provisions of the security sanction were no longer sufficient to provide a level of social cohesion that would then allow restructuring to continue unchecked.