Deviant leisure: A criminological perspective
| Published date | 01 February 2018 |
| Author | Oliver Smith,Thomas Raymen |
| Date | 01 February 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480616660188 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
660188TCR0010.1177/1362480616660188Theoretical CriminologySmith and Raymen
research-article2016
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2018, Vol. 22(1) 63 –82
Deviant leisure: A
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480616660188
DOI: 10.1177/1362480616660188
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Oliver Smith
University of Plymouth, UK
Thomas Raymen
University of Plymouth, UK
Abstract
This article explains why an understanding of deviant leisure is significant for criminology.
Through reorienting our understanding of ‘deviance’ from a contravention of norms and
values to encompassing engagement in behaviour and actions that contravene a moral
‘duty to the other’, the new ‘deviant leisure’ perspective outlined here describes activities
that through their adherence to cultural values inscribed by consumer capitalism, have the
potential to result in harm. Using the ideological primacy of consumer capitalism as a point of
departure, we explore the potential for harm that lies beneath the surface of even the most
embedded and culturally accepted forms of leisure. Such an explanation requires a reading
that brings into focus the subjective, socially corrosive, environmental and embedded harms
that arise as a result of the commodification of leisure. In this way, this article aims to act as
a conceptual foundation for diverse yet coherent research into deviant leisure.
Keywords
Consumerism, critical criminology, cultural criminology, deviance, deviant leisure,
environmental harm, leisure, social harm, ultra-realism
Introduction
The study of ‘leisure’ is perhaps one of the central preoccupations of the social sciences.
The expansion of consumer culture, the increasing precarity of work and
growing numbers of ‘active retired’ people has emphasized the role of leisure within
Corresponding author:
Oliver Smith, Plymouth Law School, Plymouth University, 19 Portland Villas, Plymouth, Devon, PL4 8AA, UK.
Email: oliver.smith@plymouth.ac.uk
64
Theoretical Criminology 22(1)
contemporary western cultures. For the most part however, criminology has tended to
gravitate towards the non-work practices of the young and marginalized. Whether scru-
tinizing drug use, joyriding, graffiti, skateboarding or smoking, much research in this
area focuses on the activities of young people engaging in behaviours that, if not always
illegal, appear close enough to the boundary between deviance and illegality to invoke
discussion around police responses, policy initiatives, antisocial behaviour and crime
prevention. As Keith Hayward (2015) has recently noted, cultural criminologists in par-
ticular have a rich tradition of exploring some of the most visible forms of ‘deviant lei-
sure’ such as graffiti writing (Alvelos, 2004; Ferrell, 1996), street racing (Vaaranen,
2004), BASE jumping and innumerable exemplars of edgework (Lyng, 1990, 2005).
This article steps back from these spectacularly ‘deviant’ activities to explore the
potential for harm associated with culturally accepted and embedded forms of leisure
which, for the most part, reflect an unquestioning commitment to consumer capitalism.
From the outset we maintain that commodified forms of leisure are incompatible with
progressive political projects, resistance or citizenship (see, for example, Riley et al.,
2013). Rather, we suggest that the leisure industries, nurtured because of their demand-
side value to the global economy, must be scrutinized through a properly critical crimi-
nological lens. Only then can we begin to understand activities that are often defended as
being social ‘goods’ or conduits for individual empowerment as inherently harmful.
The deviant leisure perspective draws upon advances in both cultural criminology
(see Hayward, 2015) and ultra-realist criminology (Hall and Winlow, 2015). Since its
earliest developmental stage (see Winlow and Hall, 2006), ultra-realism has maintained
an interest in the relationship between harmful subjectivities and the systemically cor-
rosive values of global capitalism. Cultural criminology’s focus on deviance, symbolism
and consumer culture has evolved from a romanticized analysis of ‘deviant leisure as
resistance’, to a more critical position that includes an increasingly materialist critique of
liberal capitalism and consumer culture (Ferrell, 2006; Ferrell et al., 2008; Hayward,
2015). We synthesize these theoretical approaches in order to illustrate and understand
how individual, social, economic and environmental harms are structurally embedded
within many accepted and normalized forms of leisure. Exploring this relationship
necessitates rethinking and reorienting the concept of social deviance.
Social deviance is a term generally applied throughout the social sciences to describe
behaviours that contravene socially accepted norms, values and ethical standards (see
Downes and Rock, 2007). However, for the purposes of this article and the operationali-
zation of a deviant leisure perspective, we invert this traditional interpretation of devi-
ance. In an era of ‘cool individualism’ in which it is culturally imperative to form a
unique identity that is distinct from ‘the herd’, to transgress or cultivate deviant identities
is steadfastly conformist (Hall et al., 2008; Hayward and Schuilenburg, 2014; Smith,
2014). In this sense, what could under a more ethical social order be conceptualized as
deviant behaviour is harnessed, pacified and repositioned as a very specific form of
dynamism that propels desire for symbolic objects and experiences—desires which are
translated into demand within the circuits of consumption dominated by the leisure econ-
omy. The deviant leisure perspective therefore proposes a radical shift away from the
influence of the ‘new criminology’ (see Taylor et al., 2013) and their emphasis on norms
and values towards a context of social harm. Put simply, times have changed and in the
Smith and Raymen
65
contemporary context it is the capacity for norms and values to be manipulated by the
ideological dominance of consumer capitalism that opens up a space for harm to result
from the individualistic pursuit of leisure, irrespective of what Bauman (2009) refers to
as a moral ‘duty to the other’.
While social harm approaches are not new (Hillyard and Tombs, 2004; White, 2013;
Yar, 2012a), criminology has tended to treat ‘harm’ and ‘deviance’ as two separate con-
cepts which occasionally overlap. A deviant leisure perspective aims to rectify this by
offering a conceptual foundation of social deviance in which ‘harm’ and ‘deviance’ can
always be looked at in the same analytical frame. By reframing ‘deviant’ forms of leisure
not as a contravention of norms and values but as a transgression of this ethical ‘duty to
the other’, we can discuss the harms of commodified leisure as ‘deviance’ while acknowl-
edging their conformity to social norms and values. This enables criminology to criti-
cally approach the harms of commodified leisure and its systemic roots in the corrosive
social and cultural values of late capitalism.
This preliminary exploration of a deviant leisure perspective includes a range of illus-
trative examples, but is, of course, far from being an exhaustive list. While deviant lei-
sure remains far from a ‘finished’ theoretical perspective, these initial examples and
discussions will highlight the basic theoretical approach in order to contribute to the
ongoing development of its study in criminology.
Leisure, pleasure and social harm
To some, it might seem counter-intuitive to be encouraging debate around crime, harm
and deviance against the backdrop of what has ostensibly been a period of unprecedented
success for administrative criminology. The West appears to be experiencing a statistical
crime decline (Parker, 2008), particularly across a number of volume crimes such as
burglary and car theft since a peak in the mid-1990s. There are a number of critiques of
this supposed crime drop, but for our purposes, it is sufficient to point out that the sup-
porting evidence emanates from the highly restrictive socially constructed definitions of
crime that ignore a huge number of non-criminalized, underreported and unrecorded
harms. As ultra-realist thinkers have continuously observed, while there has been a sta-
tistical drop in ‘crime’, many harms are becoming normalized and embedded within
circuits of consumption (Smith, 2014). At the same time, the hyper-competitive realm of
consumer society fails to indicate any improvement in interpersonal social relations,
individual happiness or sense of well-being (Hall et al., 2008; Raymen and Smith, 2016).
It is to this field of consumer markets and commensurate harms to which our attention
will now turn.
Much of the existing work around leisure focuses on the ‘elective affinity’ between
leisure and deviance (see Rojek, 1995; Wolfgang, 1958). Early work by cultural crimi-
nologists (see, for example, Katz, 1988) claims that deviant forms of leisure arise as a
result of the timeless natural desire to seek thrills, pleasure and excitement. Indeed, this
view is pervasive across disciplines, forming part of a liberal orthodoxy which tends to
promote individual agency and a naturalist view of resistance to authority in narratives
of harm. In this sense, the choice to seek thrills and excitement in a way that supposedly
challenges authority is often celebrated as politically charged. The...
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