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

Raymen, Thomas; Smith, Oliver

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.

Citation

Raymen, T., & Smith, O. (2016). What's Deviance Got to Do With It? Black Friday Sales, Violence, and Hyper-Conformity. The British Journal of Criminology: An International Review of Crime and Society, 56(2), 389-405. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azv051

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 16, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Jun 3, 2015
• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Jul 16, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 3, 2017
• Journal: British Journal of Criminology
• Print ISSN: 0007-0955
• Electronic ISSN: 1464-3529
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 56
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 389-405
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azv051
• Keywords: Consumerism, Black Friday, Deviance, Leisure, Shopping.
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1434677