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

Bibliographic Data

ID8400526
AuthorsThomas Raymen (0000-0002-6074-7558, University of Plymouth, corresponding author), Oliver Smith (0000-0002-7309-4509)
Year2016
Volume56
Issue2
Pages389-405
Publication date2016-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe British Journal of Criminology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-0955 • E-ISSN: 1464-3529
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/bjc/azv051
OpenAlexW2290478889
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited36

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.

Conformity · Deviance (statistics) · Ethnography · Individualism · Modernity · Neoliberalism (international relations) · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · Psychology · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology · Social Psychology