Most disruptions in social life are not as deliberate, nor do they turn the world upside down, but they disturb habitual ways of doing things. Disruptions disturb the conventional view of consumer culture, which has been painted either as a paradise of choice and freedom or as a smooth materialistic machine that has turned active citizens into docile, privatized consumers. Quite the opposite, the more consumption, the more breakdown, tension and patchwork. Disruption reveals the material world as tenuous and fragile, one that involves a lot of energy, maintenance and adjustments from consumers.
Reactions to disruption stretch from fury to a sense of liberation, but, beyond individual responses, we should also appreciate the social and political energies created in moments when collective habits suffer from interference. Disruptions trigger new social processes and political consciousness. The hope to create perfectly functional systems is therefore as unhelpful as an attitude of powerless resignation that simply treats all interferences as unavoidable. A more realistic attitude would be to recognize disruptions as a creative as well as destructive part of normality. This brings us back to poor John Kyffin, the London shopkeeper with whom we began, who had his water supply interrupted in 1895. Kyffin first took the water company to court. Then, after his case was thrown out, he mobilized citizens in his neighbourhood and led a deputation to the local government demanding stiff penalties against the water companies in compensation for the shortages they had suffered. It is debatable whether a world without disruptions would be a more desirable place.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the Economic and Social Research Council for grant RES-052-27-002 and to Heather Chappells for research assistance.
Notes
Disruption is Normal
81