RT Article
T1 Cybercrime is (often) boring: Infrastructure and alienation in a deviant subculture
JF The British journal of criminology
VO 61
IS 5
SP 1407
OP 1423
A1 Collier, Ben
A1 Clayton, Richard
A1 Hutchings, Alice
A1 Thomas, Daniel
A2 Clayton, Richard
A2 Hutchings, Alice
A2 Thomas, Daniel
LA English
YR 2021
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1776053796
AB The boredom and alienation produced by capitalist societies and countervailing forces of attraction and excitement are at the heart of the subcultural account of crime. The underground hacker subculture is no exception, commonly represented as based around exciting, technically skilled practices and high-profile deviance. However, the illicit economy associated with these practices has become industrialized, developing shared infrastructures that facilitate the sale of illicit services rather than skilled technical work. We explore how this shift in the nature of work has shaped the culture and experiences of this subculture. Developing a novel concept—the ‘illicit infrastructure’—and drawing on an extensive analysis of empirical data from interviews and novel data sources such as forums and chat channels, we argue that as they industrialize, deviant subcultures can begin to replicate the division of labour, cultural tensions and conditions of alienation present in mainstream capitalist economies.
K1 Cybercrime
K1 Subculture
K1 Infrastructure
K1 Boredom
K1 Capitalism
DO 10.1093/bjc/azab026