Lifestyle Drugs and Late Capitalism: A Topography of Harm (original) (raw)

2017

Using the new Deviant Leisure perspective allows us to understand the consumption of substances in the context of consumer capitalism and its inherent harms, which according to Žižek (2008), is where the real trouble lies. A fundamental theme sustained throughout the ensuing discussion illustrates the harms arising from global capitalism in relation to substance use. The aim is to illustrate how the contradictions inherent in neoliberal capitalism are not only responsible for some of the harms discussed, but also the ambiguities and paradoxes inherent in the realities of substance use in contemporary society, which contribute to pervasive feelings of objectless anxiety and insecurity (Hall and Winlow, 2015) as our ‘unquestioning commitment to consumer capitalism’ contributes to a range of socially corrosive and subjective harms (Smith and Raymen, 2016: 2).

The Deviant Leisure Perspective: A Theoretical Introduction

This chapter outlines the intellectual origins and theoretical foundations of the burgeoning deviant leisure perspective in criminology. It first problematises and challenges some of the central tenets of leisure as it has been approached by liberal social scientists; before going on to draw upon ultra-realist criminology theory to invite new perspectives and leisure and harm in contemporary consumer capitalism.

DEVIANT LEISURE: A CRIMINOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

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 behavior 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.

Deviant Leisure: A Critical Criminological Perspective for the 21st Century

Critical Criminology, 2019

This article argues that the time has arrived for leisure and consumerism to become key objects of study for a 21st century critical criminology. As global capitalism struggles to sustain itself it is creating myriad crises in areas such as employment, personal debt, mental health issues and climate change. Using a zemiological lens, we argue that it is on the field of commodified leisure and consumerism that criminologists can see these meta-crises of liberal capitalism unfold. Therefore, this article positions the burgeoning deviant leisure perspective as a new and distinct form of 21st century critical criminology that departs from traditional criminological approaches to leisure rooted in the sociology of deviance in favour of critical criminology’s recent zemiological turn to social harm. In doing so, this article outlines how the deviant leisure perspective’s emergence at the intersection of zemiology, green criminology and ultra-realist criminological theory enables it to address some of the realities of our times, and begin to explain the normalised harms that emanate from the relationship between commodified leisure and consumer capitalism.

Terror, Leisure and Consumption: Spaces for Harm in a Post-Crash Era

2018

Leisure has many competing definitions as its practices and composition have evolved over time. Conventional renderings of leisure place it as '"residual time" left over outside of working hours' (Tucker, 1993, p. 16). However, as working hours have changed, definitions of leisure are in flux. The rise of a 'leisure industry' interfacing with contemporary notions of 'lifestyle' intersects popular culture, consumption and capital, to commodify time and space, interest and enthusiasm. During industrialism leisure was fought for as a space for self-determination, first encoded as personal time to pursue intimate or local interests and then later, to enable workers to enter into the consumer landscape of the middle class by indulging in public and semi-private pastimes that increasingly engaged cultures of exchange. The commodification of leisure has stimulated conspicuous consumption in the pursuit of pleasure and sensation, as shopping, purchase and exchange whether in tourism, serious leisure pursuits, listening to music or any other of the expanding myriad of

Play space: historical and socio-cultural reflections on drugs, licensed leisure locations, commercialisation and control

International Journal of Drug Policy, 2004

This paper will consider legal and illicit drug use in relation to changing leisure spaces, reflecting on different types of leisure space from the formal, controlled and purpose built licensed leisure locations of the modern urban landscape to the illicit, unregulated and wild zones beyond. Drawing on a range of literature, as well as empirical studies by the author, the historical and socio-cultural development of leisure space in relation to dance clubs, public houses and café bars in the UK will be considered. The relationship between spatiality, consumption, commercialisation and control is analysed through a consideration of changes in licensed leisure spaces; changes in the use of legal and illicit drugs within them; and state and commercial responses to these changes at local and national level. After pub and club space, the third and final consideration is the notion of head space, utilised and commodified in the pursuit of pleasure in late modern consumer society.

Leisure and health: conjoined and contested concepts

Annals of Leisure Research, 2019

This paper explores the various ideas, notions and conversations that underpin the leisure/health nexus and focuses on identifying the interrelatedness and synergies between these concepts. There are competing understandings of ‘health’ that underpin the domains of leisure. Within these disciplines there are contrasting discussions involving biological, economic, environmental, historical, medical, political, psychological and sociological ways of constructing meaning. These occur in the domains of bio-medical treatment and health promotion framed within embodiment and embodiment practice. The bio-medical domain frames ‘health’ as the prevention of disease/illness/injury and views ‘leisure’ as a tool through which to reduce risk. While 21st century health promotion posits ‘health’ more holistically, ‘leisure’ still often focuses on issues related to individual’s physical ‘health’. In reality leisure and health are complex concepts that exist within a system of ebbs and flows that impact each other in different ways depending on your point of view.

Annals of Leisure Research Leisure and health: conjoined and contested concepts

Annals of Leisure Research, 2019

Lifestyle Drugs and Late Capitalism: A Topography of Harm (original) (raw)

Related papers