What’s Deviance Got to Do With It? Black Friday Sales, Violence and Hyper-conformity

Raymen, Thomas and Smith, Oliver (2016) What’s Deviance Got to Do With It? Black Friday Sales, Violence and Hyper-conformity. British Journal of Criminology, 56 (2). pp. 389-405. ISSN 0007-0955

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azv051

Abstract

Based upon original ethnographic and interview data, this article presents an initial theorization and analysis of the violence and disorder witnessed throughout UK high streets and superstores during the 2014 Black Friday sales. While the conduct of these ‘extreme shoppers’ appeared deviant, this article positions such behaviour as hyper-conformity to the cultural values of neoliberalism, embodying the competitive individualism, cultivation of envy and aggressive display of consumer items which characterizes Western society in late modernity. In doing so, the authors explore the concept of ‘deviant leisure’, using the disorder of Black Friday to pose important questions about how the underpinning social and cultural values of neoliberal consumer capitalism pervades relatively mundane leisure activities, cultivating harmful subjectivities.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: consumerism, black friday, deviance, leisure, shopping
Subjects: L300 Sociology
L600 Anthropology
L700 Human and Social Geography
Department: Faculties > Arts, Design and Social Sciences > Social Sciences
Depositing User: Rachel Branson
Date Deposited: 30 Mar 2020 13:53
Last Modified: 31 Jul 2021 13:50
URI: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/42610

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