By Anna Birney at Forum for the Future

You might expect me to talk about the root causes of the current riots and its relation to sustainability. Examples might include our consumerist society values meaning we rely upon people feeling disconnected from the world (see Alex Hiller via Zoe Williams). Or I might look at the growing inequity between rich and poor, making the riots a natural response to the brutality of poverty (and consequently linking it to the current political cuts) – ‘condemned to a darkness where their humanity is not even valued enough to be helped’ (Camila Batmanghelidjh). However, that might just be adding another analysis to the growing number of well-argued comments.

Instead I want to reflect upon two stories: the spread of the riots and my corresponding need to find information about what was happening only streets away in my own neighbourhood – Camberwell, South East London.

Firstly – what makes one person one day get up and decide to join a group of people? How did one event on Saturday night spiral into many over the next few of days? What was the tipping point, what was the context that suddenly made joining in okay, what was bubbling under the surface and what made them leap into action? Social theory says that we all have our own personal tipping points, the moment when we feel it is acceptable to join in, and that we are constantly looking for social cues to know where to get our behaviour from. These cues might be based on values but often these are also crafted by our peers.

The second story happened on Tuesday morning when a neighbour called to say her dentist had heard of a planned ‘riot’ in Camberwell. I went online to check out news channels and Twitter. Had I believed what was reported then we’d already been under siege and fires would have broken out. However, thanks to some choice editing and @Camberwellblog (see summary ) it transpired that Chinese whispers had been at play and all was calm.

We all have our own way of sifting through what is out there and we all have choices to make about what we do and don’t listen to, both based on our underlying values and the social context.

Although what has happened over the past few days can make the news feel unbearable to watch, how can we learn from situations like these? Over the coming weeks I am sure there will be more ‘problem’ analyses and hopefully some will look to the root causes in our society’s values system. There is also a lot to learn about the processes of social change for those of us working for a sustainable future. This is not only in watching the social behaviour of others but taking time out to observe how we personally take action – for example our efforts to clean up the mess. Many of us in the field of sustainability need to pay more attention to the dynamics of social change and apply these to both our organisations and social systems.

This article originally appeared on the website of independent sustainability experts Forum for the Future.

Image courtesy of George Rex on flickr