Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 18:19:55 +1200
From: "na.devine" <na.devine-AT-auckland.ac.nz>
Subject: Re: Zero-tolerance policing


Vunch challengs us to think about 

'the problems of massive high school dropping-out', and 'so much 
violence in the first place'


In talking about human beings we have this strange romantic notion of 
what is normal. We imagine an idyllic condition  and think that is 
standard for human beings and somehow we are currently off the gold 
standard as it were.  It may well be that the massive high school 
not-dropping-out of a previous era ( when? ) was the oddity, not present 
conditions. and anyway,  is attendance at high school an indication of 
the health of a society or simply its prosperity or rate of 
unemployment? 

I am as much against violence as anyone, indeed my life has been 
seriously affected by it, but I would challenge anyone who thinks that 
violence isn't the norm in our society. Indeed Foucault examines 
Clausewitz's aphorism that war is diplomacy by other means, and reverses 
it: diplomacy/law is war by other means: the bottom line is who can  
hurt who more. He says that the law is ultimately founded on the ability 
to kill. (Power/knowledge, two lectures, I think) I think what is the 
recent difference is the media attention to forms of violence among the 
poor, and there potential for affecting the not-poor. Most crimes are 
committed by the poor against the poor, and these are not frankly what 
schools or vigilante societies worry about. But the threat to people of 
property is heavily played up. 

The emphasis on dropping out/crime/unemployment amounts to a kind of 
package of goods which young people particularly are being sold in order 
to keep them in line, under supervision in schools, or jobs, and has an 
impact on parents and teachers as they struggle to help their little 
charges avoid a fate worse than death. In fact when I reflect on the 
phrase I just used, the process is exactly the same as the Victorian way 
of keeping women under control by the threat of exclusion. 

I think that perhaps what is new is the effect of technology; where once 
young working class men could be effectively reduced in number  - and 
had some value to their society/govt  - by sending them off to war,  the 
existence of nuclear weapons makes this an unattractive option, so these 
poor sods have no use at all. Factory owners usually prefer women 
because they are more docile and cheaper. We have a high suicide rate 
for young males, but the effect on the problem is minimal. Maybe Dean 
Swift had the right idea.


Nesta