Crime, Harm and Consumerism

This book offers a collection of cutting-edge essays on the relationship between crime, harm and consumer culture. Although consumer culture has been addressed across the social sciences, it has yet to be fully explored in criminology. The editors bring together an impressive list of authors with original ideas and a fresh perspective to this field. The collection first introduces the reader to three sets of ideas which will be especially useful to students and researchers piecing together theoretical frameworks for their studies. New concepts such as pseudo-pacification, the materialist libertine and the commodification of abstinence can be used as foundation stones for new explanatory criminological analyses in the 21st century. The collection then moves on to present case studies based on rigorous empirical work in the fields of consumption and debt, 'outlaw' gangs, illegal drug markets, gambling, the mentality that drives investment fraudsters and the relationship between social media and state surveillance. These case studies showcase the strength of the research skills and knowledge these scholars offer to the field of criminology. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars in criminology, sociology, cultural studies, social theory and those interested in learning about the effects of consumer culture in modern society.

Steve Hall is an Emeritus Professor of Criminology who worked at the universities of Northumbria, Durham and Teesside. Essentially a criminologist, he has also published in the fields of sociology, history and radical philosophy. He is author of Theorizing Crime and Deviance, and co-author of The Rise of the Right, Revitalizing Criminological Theory, Riots and Political Protest, Rethinking Social Exclusion, Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture and Violent Night. He is co-editor of New Directions in Criminology. Tereza Kuldova is a social anthropologist and Senior Researcher at the Work Research Institute, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway. She is the author of the monographs How Outlaws Win Friends and Influence People, Luxury Indian Fashion: A Social Critique and editor of Fashion India: Spectacular Capitalism, as well as Urban Utopias: Excess and Expulsion in Neoliberal South Asia and Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs and Street Gangs: Scheming Legality, Resisting Criminalization. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of the open-access peer-reviewed Journal of Extreme Anthropology. Mark Horsley is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Chester. He is the author of The Dark Side of Prosperity, a book about the causes and consequences of mass indebtedness in the run up to and aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. In addition to other works on credit and debt, he has also published on criminological theory and the history of crime.

Introduction Part 1. Historical and Theoretical Perspectives 1. Consumer Culture and English History's Lost Object 2. The Libertine: Criminal Luxury, the Sadean System, and Materialist Horror 3. The Commodification of Abstinence Part 2. Contexts and Case Studies 4. Mass Indebtedness and the Luxury of Payment Means 5. Luxury Brands in the Wrong Hands: Of Harleys, Harm and Sovereignty 6. Substances: The Luxurious, the Sublime and the Harmful 7. Gambling and Harm in 24/7 Capitalism: Reflections from the Post-Disciplinary Present 8. Toxic Sovereignty: Understanding Fraud as the Expression of Special Liberty within Late-Capitalism 9. Spy vs Spy: The Surveillance State of Social Media Index