Disruptive Orders

Are riots more than just breakdowns of order? Are rioters just violently and chaotically disrupting the status quo or are they individuals acting together in a surprisingly orderly manner? In Disruptive Orders, Nona Martin Storr and Virgil Henry Storr argue that riots are rule-governed, self-generating, emergent phenomena. Viewing riots as what they call “tensive emergent orders” offers a grammar for discussing riots that foregrounds the motivations and actions of individual rioters, the tacit rules that rioters follow, and the socio-political causes and consequences of riots . Applying this grammar to the 1942 riot that occurred in the Bahamas, Storr and Storr demonstrate how the 1942 riot was not just a momentary outburst but a watershed event in the country’s history, ushering in far-reaching socio-political changes. As we move into an era of frequent extreme protests, Disruptive Orders urges us to rethink why the threatened and marginalized sometimes speak through riots and gives us a framework to assess the impact of their speaking in this way.

Nona Martin Storr is Senior Affiliated Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Her scholarly work has focused on the political and social histories of disadvantaged communities. She holds a PhD in History from George Mason University and a MA in Public History (with an emphasis in oral history) from Loyola University Chicago. Her writings on riots have appeared in the Journal of Caribbean History, Island Studies Journal and Space and Culture.

Virgil Henry Storr is the Don C. Lavoie Senior Fellow in the he Mercatus Center's F.A. Hayek Program in Philosophy, Politics and Economics a Professor of Economics, and a Professor of Economics at George Mason University. Storr’s previous book with Palgrave Macmillan include Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals? and Community Revival in the Wake of Disaster.

“In Disruptive Orders, authors Nona and Virgil Storr provide a compelling reassessment of the significance of the Burma Road Riot. … Beyond a solid theoretical intervention, the authors are to be commended for the depth of archival and ethnographic research that makes this study an excellent contribution to Bahamian social-political history and larger studies on public disturbances.”

• Dr. Christopher Curry, author of Freedom and Resistance: A Social History of Black Loyalists in the Bahamas

"This book provides a fascinating account of the 1942 riot that occurred in the Bahamas.”

• Professor Matthew Moran, author of The Republic and the Riots

“As a Bahamian and as someone who has spent years in public service, I fully endorse the powerful and necessary insights that Disruptive Orders brings to our understanding of the 1942 riot and its lasting impact on The Bahamas. This important work reframes the event as a catalyst for change. It does not glorify unrest but provides a thoughtful framework to understand why such moments arise and how they shape the trajectory of a people.”

• Hon. Kwasi Thompson, Member of Parliament for East Grand Bahama, Former Minister of State for Grand Bahama and Finance

“Hayekian spontaneous order meets the theory and practice of urban riots. In Disruptive Orders, Nona and Virgil Storr offer a fascinating and persuasive account of the role of spontaneous street protests in driving social change. Creative social theory at its best.”

• Professor Mark Pennington, author of Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom