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

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 a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Raymen, Thomas (Author)
Contributors: Smith, Oliver
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 2016
In: The British journal of criminology
Year: 2016, Volume: 56, Issue: 2, Pages: 389-405
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Keywords:
Black Friday
Consumerism
Deviance
Leisure
Shopping
Description
Summary: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.
ISSN:1464-3529
DOI:10.1093/bjc/azv051