Where’s the Harm in Deviance? Conceptualising Harm for Deviant Leisure

• In Event: Deviant Leisure, Resistance and Harm

Abstract

The concept of social deviance is generally applied throughout the social sciences to describe behaviours which contravene socially accepted norms, values and ethical standards. However, under the conditions of late-capitalist consumer culture we are witnessing a number of harmful behaviours which are becoming normalised, legitimised and celebrated forms of leisure, driven by consumer capitalism’s economic need for a liberal moral relativism. From a deviant leisure perspective, this paper questions the on-going utility of ‘social deviance’ as a criminological concept, and argues a need to invert the traditional interpretation of deviance and consider the extent to which transgression and the cultivation of ‘deviant’ identities is in fact a form of cultural conformity to the values of neoliberal capitalism.

Drawing on Bauman’s (1989) notion of the ‘duty to the other’, the paper presents a more ontologically-grounded conceptualisation of harm which can avoid a moral relativism in order to consider systemic social harms as well as incorporating eco-justice perspectives.

Authors

• Thomas Raymen, Plymouth University

• Oliver Smith, Plymouth University, UK