Cultural criminology, consumerism and deviant leisure: understanding the connections/distinctions

• In Event: Cultural Criminology: Trajectories

Abstract

A central feature of cultural criminology is its longstanding interest in the ‘crime-consumerism nexus’; a line of enquiry that has spawned a range of innovative studies into everything from the urban underground of dumpster diving and trash picking, to new forms of criminogenic subjectivity associated with late modern ‘hyper strain’. Typically, this body of work has been concerned with forms of illegal activity linked to the types of emotions and subjectivities engendered by Anglo-American consumerism – here one thinks, for example, of joy-riding, mobile phone theft, or rioting. In recent years, however, the criminological study of consumerism has been expanded and enhanced by the emergence of ‘deviant leisure’ studies – forms of undeniably harmful leisure that are not only legal but positively sanctioned and encouraged, such as excessive alcohol consumption in the night-time economy, stratified pornographic violence, or legalised forms of online gambling. This paper introduces these two overlapping approaches in order to a) highlight their respective strengths and weaknesses; and b) identity potential future lines of mutual collaboration. Perhaps most importantly, the paper concludes by addressing the issue of “resistance”: in particular, whether or not many contemporary forms of “deviance” can still be considered truly resistant to the dominant socio-economic order or simply a warped post-political reflection of it?

Author

• Keith Hayward, University of Copenhagen