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A series of overtly racialised disturbances in Australia in late 2005 resulted in contrasting interpretations from social science academics and media analysts who were less concerned to illuminate the life worlds of the participants in the events than to explain the social forces at work.Explanations were offered that blamed the current federal government and media for exacerbating latent xenophobia and linked this with a series of familiar social science categories such as alienation, moral panic, discrimination or anti-social behaviour.Some of these elements are common to contemporary riots in Paris and Birmingham, others can be seen in Redfern and Palm Island.Such general causes are 'master narratives', which homogenise complex local meanings into general conditions of poverty, racial fears fostered by governments and perceived, and real, social injustices.Ethnography offers more intimate and complex perspectives.The Cronulla riot is distinctive in that it is not a subordinate group protesting as in the other cases.This is a segment of the dominant group protesting because it imagines itself as marginalised, as being progressively provoked, depowered and humiliated.The riot is where it draws a line in the sand about what it will tolerate.It sees itself engaged in an ongoing battle, encountered in everyday struggles for respect and dignity.In these papers we can get closer to the action and the psycho-social dynamics at work in the Cronulla riot by listening carefully to local voices as they articulate a sense of reality which is linked, but not reducible to, the general conditions in which the participants live.The way global events impact on social perceptions and social relations is illuminated here.Instead of seeking the bad guys among the 'Aussies' or the 'Lebs', or in media and political opportunism, these analysts see the riot as expressing a complex set of conditions that entail local ideological, perceptual and emotional forces that arose in specific political and economic conditions.Rather than establishing causes that could be solved with good social engineering, they offer richly significant moments in local lives and their entailment in global dynamics.These three papers were given in a session titled 'The Spectacle and the Substance of Rioting' that I organised at the Australian Anthropological Society 2006 conference in Cairns.Because riots always become a matter of intense public scrutiny-from hysterical media reports to solemn social analysis-I wanted to include attention to what made rioting such an enticing activity, drawing crowds of excited participants from far and wide.Thinking of Canetti's Crowds and Power (1973, Penguin Books) I had hoped that there would be some exploration of the actual events entailed in rioting, their expressive,
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