CONSUMER CULTURE AND CRIME

Consumer Culture And Crime

Chapter 1: Introduction

Background of the study

New and distinct consumer-driven patterns of relationships and integrative transformations are forcing us to reconsider virtually every aspect of contemporary society, from the cultural logic of materialist historicism to (even more fundamental) issues surrounding the notion of personal/individual identity. Yet, despite these significant changes and reformulations, criminology, in all its many theoretical variants, seems to have developed something of a studied disregard toward the subject of late modern consumer culture, choosing instead to uphold a more traditional materialist reading of the relationship between commodification and crime. In a bid to address this shortcoming, this essay has two aims: first, to introduce to a criminological audience the key themes and debates associated with the burgeoning literature on consumer culture and consumerism; and second, to identify and explore some of the overlapping theoretical terrain that now exists between this body of research and certain branches of theoretical criminology, the intention being to formulate some tentative theoretical links between these two seemingly distinct fields of inquiry.

Aims and Objectives of the study

The follwing are the aims and objective of the study:

Establish a relationship between consumer culture and prevalence of crime.

Discuss the different theories such as Social strain theory, Relative deprivation to explain the relatiuon between consumer culture and crime.

Research Question

The study seeks to answer the following question:

How is consumer culture related to crime?

Significance of the study

Modernity gives us a series of expectations as to self-realization and personal growth - we are to become other than what we have been through the choosing of identities, employment roles and seizing opportunities - but actual human beings have not fully escaped being defined by their location in situations of enablement and restraint. Human beings will be disappointed - they wish to take control of their selves, they wish to realise their (future) self-potential, but are located in demeaning and restraining circumstances - a crisis of action develops.(1995: 301)

In many cases, the “crisis of action” Morrison refers to will be crime. Indeed, one might describe the situation outlined above as a recipe for criminality. This being the case, it is essential that any attempt to revamp the concept of relative deprivation takes into consideration the concomitant forms of subjectivity that are engendered by a fast-moving consumer culture, and attempts, when possible, to link this to criminal motivation. Simply stated, emotions, sensations, and consumer-orientated cognitions must now be located prominently on the criminological agenda. Interestingly, there is at least one commentator who has already recognized this fact, the American criminologist, Elliott Currie. Developing the work of Willem Bonger, Currie shares with Merton and Young the belief that market society creates crime by promoting standards of consumption which the vast majority of people can never feasibly achieve. However, he goes considerably further, and points to the actual “psychological distortions” that are engendered within individuals by a fast-paced consumer society. Consider, for example, the following passage, which is worth quoting in full for all its tone of high moralism:

One of the ...