Deviant Leisure: Criminological Perspectives on Leisure and Harm

By Thomas Raymen and Oliver Smith

This book brings together a collection of critical essays that challenge the existing dogma of leisure as an unmitigated social good, in order to examine the commodification and marketisation of leisure across a number of key sites. Leisure and consumer culture have become symbolic of the individual freedoms of liberal society, ostensibly presenting individuals with the opportunity to display individual creativity, cultural competence and taste. This book problematizes these assertions, and considers the range of harms that emerge in a consumer society predicated upon intense individualism and symbolic competition. Approaching the field of commodified leisure through the lens of social harm, this collection of essays pushes far beyond criminology’s traditional interest in ‘deviant’ forms of leisure, to consider the normalized social, interpersonal and environmental harms that emerge at the intersection of leisure and consumer capitalism. Capturing the current vitality and interdisciplinary scope of recent work which is underpinned by the deviant leisure perspective, this collection uses case studies, original research and other forms of empirical enquiry to scrutinise activities that range from alcohol consumption and gambling, to charity tourism; CrossFit training; and cosmetic pharmaceuticals. Drawn from researchers across the UK, US, Europe and Australia, Deviant Leisure: Criminological Perspectives on Leisure and Harm represents the first systematic attempt at a criminological consideration of the global harms of the leisure industry; firmly establishing leisure as a subject of serious criminological importance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Sep 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9783030177362

Book preview

© The Author(s) 2019

T. Raymen, O. Smith (eds.)Deviant LeisurePalgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culturehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17736-2_1

1. Introduction: Why Leisure?

Thomas Raymen¹   and Oliver Smith²  

(1)

Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK

(2)

University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK

Thomas Raymen (Corresponding author)

Email: [e-mail]

Oliver Smith

Email: [e-mail]

Keywords

Deviant LeisureLeisure StudiesConsumerismSocial HarmCritical Criminology

We live in an age in which ‘leisure’ is viewed as integral to a good life. Within both the academy and the popular imagination, it continues to be understood and conceptualised in relation to issues of individual freedom and self-expression and in opposition to the constraints of work and labour. Within a society dominated by the political, economic and cultural values of liberalism, leisure has been elevated beyond just the status of a ‘social good’. In many ways, it has been popularly conceived as an inalienable right—a representation of our political, cultural and economic ‘freedom’ (Rojek 2010). In an era of a liberalised consumer capitalism, it has become an important marker by which we measure individual identity and collective social ‘progress’.

Nevertheless, given the truly colossal problems and uncertainties currently facing global society, the study of leisure does not immediately jump out as a pressing issue that demands the critical attention of social scientists. Political tensions, widening inequalities at both global and domestic levels, widespread mental health issues and an increasingly immediate environmental crisis are characteristic of our present moment in history. They demand deep thinking and even deeper systemic political, economic and cultural changes if we are to find solutions and avoid the consequences of such challenges. Therefore, a focus on leisure would seem to be a largely superfluous and self-indulgent undertaking: the privilege of academics musing on what they find interesting, irrespective of its immediate social relevance. However, in many respects, contemporary leisure constitutes the cultural embodiment of our dominant political-economic order of neoliberal capitalism which, as many critical scholars have argued, underpins these global crises. As the reader will find in the pages and chapters that follow, it is on the field of leisure, and its processes of production , facilitation, consumption and disposal, that we see the meta-crises of liberal capitalism play out.

As such, our relationship with leisure has never been more complex, and we are living in an era in which leisure has demanded immediate critical engagement like never before. The concentration of conspicuous consumption within the wealthy classes identified by Thorstein Veblen (1965) at the turn of the last century has mutated into a more democratised form of leisure whereby many forms of leisure that would previously have been the preserve of a wealthy elite are now conceived of as rights or expectations. Processes of globalisation and increasingly networked forms of technology and communication have radically changed our relationship to leisure and have re-framed the impacts of leisure on society and the world around us. The environmental impact of the leisure and consumer industries and their political-economic underpinnings is arguably the most profound challenge facing humanity. The interests of our research collective into such issues extend from the burgeoning tourist industries that rack up carbon emissions and transform entire cities, regions and eco-systems (see Large; Smith, this volume) to the production, distribution, consumption and disposal of more mundane commodities like bottled water (Brisman and South 2014). Meanwhile, at the level of the individual, we are witnessing widespread issues of mental health , depression, body dysmorphia and self-harm. The Office for National Statistics recently reported that teenage suicides in England and Wales have risen by 67% since 2010 (Khan 2018), while research by the Children’s Society (2018) found that a quarter of 14-year-old girls had self-harmed in the last year. These issues are undeniably multifaceted, but it is not unreasonable to suggest that such figures are connected to the meteoric rise of social media and its transformation of social relationships which intensify competitive individualism against a backdrop of inadequacy and lack (Barber 2007). Furthermore, the crisis of employment that is embedded within processes of globalisation, deindustrialisation and automation are also intimately connected to issues of leisure. Trapped within liberalism’s fetishising of autonomous individualism, it is leisure studies scholars on the ‘new left’ who dreamed of a ‘leisure society’ with less work or without work entirely. For these scholars, less work and more leisure naturally equated to more freedom and more happiness. The evidence would suggest that this is far from the case, and it is an argument which the chapters in this book would seriously question, drawing upon more recent critical studies into consumer capitalism and its basis in the cultivation of dissatisfaction (McGowan 2004, 2016).

We could go on, but we would like to avoid our natural inclination for verbosity and leave our contributors with something to say in their respective chapters. Nevertheless, given the above, it is perhaps unsurprising to learn that criminologists as well as social scientists more broadly have shown an interest in the study of leisure—particularly given the pronounced zemiological turn within criminology in recent years (Hillyard and Tombs 2004; Kotzë 2018; Pemberton 2016). It is an interest in harm that unites this varied group of contributors to this volume, alongside their refusal to be constrained to the parameters of what traditionally constitutes criminology. The contributors to this volume come from a range of academic backgrounds such as Sociology, Criminology, Leisure Studies and Health Sciences, which adds variety and diversity to the study of deviant leisure. This book comprises some of the best academics in the field, and we are grateful for the time they have taken to orient themselves towards this project, culminating in a collection of work with the potential to carry its influence beyond the fields of study of both criminology and leisure studies.

The deviant leisure perspective uncovers a complex dynamic of harm, exploitation and vulnerability within a range of leisure practices, underpinned by the global dominance of consumer capitalism (Smith and Raymen 2016; Hayward and Smith 2017). This is not likely to be a popular observation. However, theories of leisure and harm are too important to be left solely to leisure studies scholars, who operate within a field that cannot escape a legacy of theories espousing a gleefully optimistic portrayal of leisure (Parker 1971; Kaplan 1960; Cheek and Burch 1976), while marginalising the role of harm or inequality within leisure practices and broader processes of commodification. For scholars such as Parker (1981), it stood to reason that leisure was a clearly compartmentalised area of life, distinct from all other facets of contemporary existence, while others such as Bell (1974) and Kaplan (1960) cheerfully predicted the dawning of a leisure society premised upon technological advancement and a resultant wealth of free time. The notion of free time is of course central to our understanding of leisure, and it is what places it in such a position of importance—as an example we need only to think how important the notion of work-life balance has become over recent years, with its connections to health and well-being. Furthermore, the notion of free time is becoming increasingly oxymoronic. As Crary (2013) illustrates, our 24/7 society represents a very real erosion of free time in every conceivable sense. Elsewhere, jobs in a changing economy rely more on emotional labour (Hochschild 1983) and result in a blurring of the distinction between work and leisure. If our leisure time can be punctured by an insistent email from a boss or client, then to what extent can we really stake a claim to free time? As Marcuse outlined in the late 1960s, the potential to which leisure is capable of providing freedom through its myriad choice and promise of individualised, tailored leisure experiences is tempered by the stark reality that engagement within spheres of leisure requires commitment to existing structures of work, and a dedication to competitive consumer markets, constituting a peculiar form of freedom indeed.

The leisure society predicted by leisure studies scholars never came to fruition. Changes in the structures of political economy characterised by the adoption of neoliberal policies created a vacuum into which consumerism proliferated, altering the landscape of leisure irreversibly. Most importantly for the contributors to this book, the collision of leisure with global consumer cultures has had the effect of propagating a range of harms against individuals, societies and the environment. It is these normalised harms that occur within the everyday mundanity of leisure practices rather than contraventions of legal frameworks that are framed as deviant leisure. Understanding these changes and the challenges they create and putting into practice policies and interventions to redirect the trajectory of global leisure cultures require new theories and ways of thinking. Only then will we be able to reorient ourselves towards perspectives that are fit for understanding leisure at this point in time as well as in the future.

Beyond this introductory chapter, the book comprises five distinct parts. Part I deals with the theoretical underpinnings of the deviant leisure perspective. While theoretical discussion resurfaces throughout the parts of the book, Part I offers a critique of both mainstream criminology and leisure studies, emphasising the need for new theoretical directions. Thomas Raymen and Oliver Smith open this part, outlining the core parameters of the deviant leisure perspective and illustrating their central definitional point that deviant leisure refers not simply to contravention of societal norms and legal frameworks but to how harm is embedded within some of the most normalised and culturally resonant forms of leisure. Simon Winlow examines the ultra-realist underpinnings of the deviant leisure perspective, noting how work in this area is united through a rejection of the idealism that tends to dominate youth sociology and leisure studies. Importantly, Winlow is unequivocal about the gravity of the global challenges that are coming to characterise the Anthropocene. The unprecedented nature of changes in politics, culture, the environment and the economy renders many of the explanatory mechanisms that social scientists have used to make sense of the world are largely redundant. In the following chapter, Robert Stebbins, one of the central figures of leisure studies outlines the complex impact that commodification has had on leisure, acknowledging the lacuna in critical perspectives that the deviant leisure perspectives explored within these pages promise to address. The final chapter in this part sees Steve Redhead argue that deviant leisure perspectives stand between critical leisure studies and critical realist criminology, suggesting that deviant leisure is perfectly placed to remix raw realism and high theory. To illustrate this, he draws upon recent research into football fandom, specifically changes in ‘ultras’ on the global stage.

Part II examines how the harms associated with leisure are intertwined with broader processes of consumerism, necessitating a critical understanding of global consumer culture. Keith Hayward and Tim Turner draw on their ethnographic fieldwork in the party island of Ibiza to examine how the pursuit of luxury and VIP status in these disneyfied environments exemplify Mark Fisher’s (2009) concept of depressive hedonia. Using the work of Bryman (2004) as a point of departure, they examine evidence of theming, branding and hybrid consumption that combines to fashion a distinct form of hedonistic party culture that has contrived to erode more traditional beach cultures in Ibiza. Returning to British shores, Tammy Ayres’ chapter outlines and contextualises the harms arising from substance use in the night-time economy. Ayres notes the role of market capitalism in radically altering the role of identity, suggesting that these changes have driven aesthetic displays which revolve around narcissism, and competitive individualism. Alexandra Hall explores the ‘complex patterns of benefit and harm’ that exist around the proliferation of lifestyle drugs, embedding her analysis in the context of consumer demand, supply-side dynamics and processes of global capitalism. Hall notes how the rapid growth in demand for lifestyle drugs, embedded within a broader marketplace which defines and commodifies health, fitness and well-being, has created new markets that are populated by counterfeiters and illicit traders. Kyle Mulrooney and Katinka van de Ven explore the use of performance enhancing drugs within the fitness industry. By using the prolific rise in popularity of CrossFit as an example, Mulrooney and van de Ven examine the relationship between ‘fitness consumerism’ and the willingness of some crossFitters to engage in harmful behaviours in a chapter which illustrates how the deviant leisure perspective helps illuminate harms that tend to be overlooked, side-lined or ignored.

Part III explores the proliferation of digital cultures and outlines how these spaces create new forms of harm as well as exacerbate and promulgate existing harms. Rowland Atkinson examines how new forms of digital media have generated new possibilities for creating spaces of cultural exception in which real and virtual harms are enacted without prohibition. The expression of unchecked violent and libidinal impulses within the context of the networked society illustrates a troubling confluence of technology, social change and new harms, which do not reflect the narratives of technological emancipation and cultural resistance that dominate more optimistic accounts. Corina Medley uses the deviant leisure perspective to question the claim that feminist pornography is politically progressive. Drawing on original data, she illustrates some of the ways in which the industry generates revenue from products which commodify political resistance. Medley uses the concept of hedonic realism to highlight the contested relationship between pleasure and progressive politics, concluding that the neoliberal imagination has a stranglehold on pleasure, linking it to systemic forms of violence. Thomas Raymen explores the psychological, familial and financial harms that are emerging within consumer capitalism’s new flexibilised culture of identity-oriented lifestyle gambling (see also Raymen and Smith 2017). Here, Raymen looks at the implication of the algorithmic underpinnings of online gambling and how technology has fundamentally altered the gambler’s relationship to money to create new and intensified forms of indebtedness and anxiety.

Part IV looks more carefully at environmental harms that emanate from some of the most mundane forms of leisure, such as tourism and leisure travel. Tourism represents one of the fastest growing industries and as such is often spoken about in hushed tones of admiration, particularly within the tourism literature. A deviant leisure perspective, however, places the apparent harms of tourism and recreational travel front and centre of a critical understanding. Where criminology has encountered tourism, the emphasis tends to be on holidaymakers as perpetrators or victims of crime, limiting our understanding of tourism as a criminological phenomenon to a mundane categorisation of socio-legal definitions of illegality. Rob White examines the contribution of tourism to a number of serious environmental problems. He considers harms at the global level, as well as considering more localised impacts, concluding that in the light of global population growth alongside the expansion of the global tourism industry, our global wildernesses are shrinking and our urban environments are increasingly polluted. In short, nowhere is safe from the harms of tourism and no place is unaffected. The rest of this part explores niche markets of the global tourism industry. More specifically, Oliver Smith examines how the increased focus upon luxury within global tourism exacerbates a range of existing harms, as well as creates new ones. Drawing on examples such as canned hunting, status destinations and adventure tourism, Smith concludes that the potential for harm is written into the cultural scripts of the tourist industry, with the desire for increased luxury unlikely to be tempered by a growing market in sustainable or ‘green’ tourism. In the final chapter in this part, Jo Large notes the recent growth in volunteer tourism, with tourists seduced by the promise of the opportunity to ‘give something back’ while enjoying their leisure experience. Volunteer tourists are likely to sign up to working with children, teaching English, working in orphanages in developing countries. Large critiques the position that these new forms of tourism offer a genuinely pro-social alternative to mass tourism, citing instances of exploitation and harm, promotion of dependency and hazardous construction projects that run over time and suffer from a paucity of skilled volunteer labour.

The final part is concerned with the harmful ways in which leisure intersects with space and place. In recent years, criminologists have developed an interest in spatial exclusion, urban transgression and the hyper-regulation of cities. The first two chapters in this part critique the connotation of politically directed resistance in two forms of leisure which are ubiquitous in urban centres: the popular imagination and media representation. Thomas Raymen uses the deviant leisure perspective to offer a critical examination of parkour (see also, Raymen 2018). Many scholars to date have portrayed parkour as a form of symbolic and performative resistance. Raymen, however, contends that parkour is instead hyper-conformist, adhering strictly to the underlying values of consumer capitalism, despite being aggressively policed and excluded from urban centres. Theo Kindynis makes a similar argument in relation to urban exploration. More specifically, Kindynis notes that urban exploration as a leisure pursuit has developed alongside the proliferation of social media and image-sharing platforms such as Instagram, Flickr and Tumblr. This has led to an accentuation of the importance of the spectacular and the development of offshoots of urban exploration such as ‘rooftopping’ and ’buildering’, both of which are associated with breathtaking skyline photography. Here, Kindynis argues that it is difficult to claim that these forms of recreational trespass are motivated by political interests such as a desire to ‘take back the city’, and through a deviant leisure perspective, it can be linked instead to socially corrosive and harmful effects of social mediaidentity construction and consumer culture more broadly. Kate Gooch and David Sheldon close this part and the book by using the deviant leisure perspective as a lens through which to view the relationship between time and the prison institution. Unsurprisingly, they note that time is a central feature of a prison sentence—reflected of course in the colloquialism—doing time. In this context, ‘free time’ is oxymoronic but also opens channels for a fascinating discussion of how prison leisure is structured, framed and constrained by the prison environment. Here, forms of leisure are linked to exploitation, humiliation, economic gain and entertainment.

This collection of essays cannot help but stimulate thinking about leisure, consumerism and harm. We are convinced that this is an important endeavour, not least as leisure becomes increasingly embedded within multiple facets of our lives. As the discipline of criminology breaks free of its conceptual moorings, and an increasing number of scholars come to recognise the importance of legal and normalised harm within contemporary society, it makes sense to offer a critical perspective on a range of pervasive harms associated with the commodification of our leisure pursuits. In many respects, this book navigates uncharted territory for criminology and the social sciences more broadly. Many of the contributors have made bold claims that do not sit easily with a discipline that has become complacent and over-reliant on theoretical frameworks that are no longer suitable for explaining the world around us and its attendant harms. Reading these chapters together brings into clear focus the link between the ideology of market capitalism and leisure. We can no longer think of leisure and work as existing in distinct geographic, temporal or emotional spaces. Corporate interests manifest around the potential to extract surplus value from the choices we make in our ‘free time’, and as Cederström and Fleming (2012) have convincingly shown, the narratives of fun and creativity are used to boost creativity and create malleable workforces within contemporary occupational structures.

It may be tempting to view this collection as somewhat dour, and for the reader to imagine the contributors as mean-spirited killjoys, conspiring to seek out the negative in all we enjoy. To do so, we would argue, would be to miss the transformative potential and underlying optimism that resides within deviant leisure perspectives. Fundamentally, the chapters contained within this book are contributing to a reinvigorated zemiological paradigm, which we can link to progressive future developments within the discipline of criminology and social science more widely. Firstly, it is the focus on the unremarkable which allows us to reconsider what we mean by ‘deviance’. Reorienting the criminological gaze onto the normalisation of harms associated with commodified leisure allows us to contribute to policy discussion based on the development of pro-social forms of leisure.

Secondly, the critical approach taken towards leisure and its relationship with liberalism and consumer capitalism aids this process of trying to think leisure pro-socially. It opens up a unique space to rethink the purpose, function and meaning of leisure more broadly that can extend beyond the horizons of liberal thought and the fetishised attachment to leisure as a primarily individualistic pursuit of freedom, self-expression and satisfaction. Even contemporary theoretical accounts of leisure that proclaim to be ‘critical’ adopt a liberal understanding of leisure that continues to be organised around notions of individual freedom (Spracklen 2011). Spracklen (2011), one the foremost commentators within leisure studies, characterises the ‘philosophical problem of leisure’ as a dichotomous paradox between leisure and constraint. However, we would suggest that it is precisely this kind of thinking that prevents us from reimagining leisure on new terms and actually works perfectly with consumer capitalism’s commodification of almost all forms of leisure and the intensifying trend towards an instrumental individualism which, combined together, generate many of the harms documented through this collection. As Clarke and Critcher (1985: 14) have written: "Leisure has increasingly come to be seen as an act of individual consumption and/or the satisfaction of psychological needs, in which the reality and potential of leisure as a collective ‘coming together’ has been suppressed". In many respects, we need to avoid the view perpetuated by the likes of Spracklen (2011) that positions notions of ‘constraint’ within a negative light. If anything, the problems that face contemporary society demand a reimagination of leisure which has ideas of constraint at their core. This is not to perpetuate a conservative point of view to suggest that the harms that emanate from contemporary leisure are a problem of a lack of individual self-control or restraint, rather than a problem of capitalist political economy, consumer culture or the leisure industries themselves. Such a viewpoint inevitably takes us down the well-trodden neoliberal path of developing policy responses that responsibilise individual consumers; solutions which, without deeper political-economic and cultural intervention, are not only doomed to fail but also never truly designed to succeed. Rather, contemporary society needs constraint at the level of and the production of leisure, goods and experiences—something which is obviously antithetical to capitalism’s profit motive and economic model of perpetual growth and expansion of markets. However, we do need to problematise, at the level of culture, the relationship of leisure to processes of commodification and consumer capitalism and the harmful subjectivities it produces. Such a relationship produces a situation of hedonic realism in which the primary purpose of leisure is the individualistic pursuit of pleasure and privately defined desires and in which it is increasingly difficult to imagine a society in which leisure is primarily organised around cultivating genuine friendships, forms of pro-social community and collective forms of belonging.

Detaching ourselves from the confines of liberal thought, which produce unhelpful analyses of leisure as a paradox between leisure and constraint, opens up the possibilities for more radical and transformative imaginations of leisure. Therefore, we wish to try and reclaim and reimagine the notion of leisure down the lines of collectivism and a set of shared values, ethics and a reinvigorated notion of ‘the social’. This is a leisure that is detached from processes of commodification and individualism, in which the function of leisure, to mimic the lost work of community studies, is a social process in which collective identities, ethics and notions of community and social are formed, realised and expressed. Therefore, when reading the chapters that follow, we would encourage the reader to try and reimagine the various forms of leisure being discussed, and how we could reclaim and revamp a leisure that is not subject to commodification, the profit motive and consumerism’s symbolic form of aggressive competition, and is rather expressive of shared notions of ethics, the social and the Good.

References

Barber, B. R. (2007). Consumption:How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilise Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole. New York: Norton.

Bell, D. (1974). The Coming of Post Industrial Society. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Brisman, A., & South, N. (2014). Green Cultural Criminology: Constructions of Environmental Harm, Consumerism and Resistance to Ecocide. Abingdon: Routledge.

Bryman, A. (2004). The Disneyization of Society. London: Sage.

Cederström, C., & Fleming, P. (2012). Dead-Man Working. London: Zero.

Cheek, N., & Burch, W. (1976). The Social Organization of Leisure in Human Society. New York: Harper & Row.

Clarke, J., & Critcher, C. (1985). The Devil Makes Work. London: Macmillan.Crossref

Crary, J. (2013). 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. London: Verso.

Fisher, M. (2009). Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Winchester: Zero Books.

Hayward, K., & Smith, O. (2017). Crime and Consumer Culture. In A. Liebling, S. Maruna, & L. McAra (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (6th ed., pp. 306–328). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hillyard, P., & Tombs, S. (2004). Beyond Criminology’? In P. Hillyard, C. Pantazis, S. Tombs, & D. Gordon (Eds.), Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously (pp. 10–29). London: Pluto Press.

Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The Managed Heart: The Commercialisation of Feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Kaplan, M. (1960). Leisure in America. New York: Wiley.

Khan, S. (2018). Teenage Suicides in England and Wales Rise 67% Since 2010. The Independent. Retrieved from https://​www.​independent.​co.​uk/​news/​uk/​home-news/​teenage-suicides-england-and-wales-2010-ons-a8522331.​html.

Kotzë, J. (2018). Criminology or Zemiology? Yes, Please! On the Refusal of Choice Between False Alternatives. In J. Kotzë & A. Boukli (Eds.), Zemiology: Reconnecting Crime and Social Harm (pp. 85–106). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Crossref

McGowan, T. (2004). The End of Dissatisfaction? Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment. Albany: State University of New York Press.

McGowan, T. (2016). Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.Crossref

Parker, S. (1971). The Future of Work and Leisure. London: MacGibbon & Kee.

Parker, S. (1981). Choice, Flexibility, Spontaneity and Self Determination. Social Forces, 60(2), 323–331.Crossref

Pemberton, S. (2016). Harmful Societies: Understanding Social Harm. Bristol: Policy Press.

Raymen, T. (2018). Parkour, Deviance and Leisure in the Late-Capitalist City: An Ethnography. Bingley: Emerald.Crossref

Raymen, T., & Smith, O. (2017). Lifestyle Gambling, Indebtedness and Anxiety: A Deviant Leisure Perspective. Journal of Consumer Culture. https://​doi.​org/​10.​1177/​1469540517736559​

Rojek, C. (2010). The Labour of Leisure: The Culture of Free Time. London: Sage.

Smith, O., & Raymen, T. (2016). Deviant Leisure: A Criminological Perspective. Theoretical Criminology. Retrieved from http://​tcr.​sagepub.​com/​content/​early/​2016/​08/​10/​1362480616660188​.​abstract.

Spracklen, K. (2011). Constructing Leisure: Historical and Philosophical Debates. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Crossref

The Children’s Society. (2018). One in Four 14-year-old Girls Self-harm. Retrieved from https://​www.​childrenssociety​.​org.​uk/​news-and-blogs/​press-releases/​one-in-four-14-year-old-girls-self-harm.

Veblen, T. (1965). The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York, NY: Sentry Press.

Part ITheoretical Perspectives

© The Author(s) 2019

T. Raymen, O. Smith (eds.)Deviant LeisurePalgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culturehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17736-2_2

2. The Deviant Leisure Perspective: A Theoretical Introduction

Thomas Raymen¹   and Oliver Smith²  

(1)

Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK

(2)

University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK

Thomas Raymen (Corresponding author)

Email: [e-mail]

Oliver Smith

Email: [e-mail]

Keywords

Deviant leisureCapitalismPro-social leisurePolitical economyHarm

Reclaiming ‘Deviant’ Leisure

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a brief theoretical introduction to the emerging deviant leisure perspective within criminology. We have outlined elsewhere some of the founding principles of the deviant leisure perspective and the forms of leisure and harm with which it is concerned (see Smith and Raymen 2016). This chapter intends to go into more theoretical depth to explore the intellectual underpinnings of deviant leisure, specifically its critique of the relationship between liberalism , consumer capitalism and the dominant conceptions of leisure. Our use of the term ‘deviant leisure’ is quite distinct from and in many ways diametrically opposed to its existing use within the field of leisure studies in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Nevertheless, one of the central goals of this edited collection, and indeed the deviant leisure project more broadly, is a criminological and zemiological reclaiming of the term ‘deviant leisure’ from leisure studies and the sociology of deviance.

Existing work in leisure studies conceives of ‘deviant leisure’ as those leisure behaviours which violate criminal and non-criminal moral norms (Franklin-Reible 2006; Rojek 1999; Stebbins 1996; William and Walker 2006). This work has focused upon street-racing, joyriding, graffiti writing, illegal forms of pornography, the forms of crime that occur within serious leisure practices (Stebbins 1996) and even upon conceptualising some cases of serial murder as a form of ‘leisure’ (Gunn and Caissie 2002). For the most part, they are concerned with behaviours which, if not always illegal, appear close enough to the boundary between legality and illegality to invoke discussions about its legitimacy, police and policy responses, anti-social behaviour and crime prevention. This, of course, is a product of a preoccupation with the concept social deviance, the utility of which has come under criminological scrutiny in recent years (Hall et al. 2008; Smith and Raymen 2016; Sumner 1994). The concepts of crime and social deviance are socio-legal and cultural constructs which are inextricably tied to the values of liberal capitalism. Consequently, such concepts exclude many of the most normalised, accepted and culturally celebrated forms of commodified leisure which, in conforming to the central values of liberal capitalism, generate significant levels of interpersonal, parasuicidal, socially corrosive and environmental forms of social harm. These are harms which have been largely downplayed, relativised or obscured from view because of their demand-side value to post-industrial economies of consumer capitalism.

Furthermore, to suggest that such activities ‘deviate’ from the moral norms and values of contemporary society is to make two fatal errors. First, it makes the false suggestion that there is a coherent and shared conception of ethics and morality which simply does not exist in a consumer capitalist society predicated upon the pluralistic values of sovereign liberal individualism. Second, our conceptualisation of deviant leisure inverts the traditional conception of deviance as the contravention of these non-existent social norms, values and ethical standards. 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 a ‘deviant’ identity is steadfastly conformist (Hayward and Schuilenberg 2014; Heath and Potter 2006; Raymen 2018; Smith 2014). In this sense, what could under a more ethical or coherent social order be conceptualised 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 economy. Therefore, the term ‘deviant leisure’, as it is used in this book, follows the growing zemiological trend in criminology to consider the myriad harms that are embedded within some of the most popular and familiar forms of commodified leisure. Deviant leisure scholars step back from the more ‘exotic’ forms ‘transgressive leisure’ listed above to examine the more prosaic and run-of-the-mill harms that are generated by holiday-making, the night-time economy, social media, gambling, video games, CrossFit gyms and voluntourism to name a few—forms of leisure and harm that, for us, are produced by and reflect an unquestioning commitment to consumer capitalism.

The chapter will focus on what we see to be four key features of the deviant leisure perspective’s approach to studying leisure and harm. First is a problematisation of what have come to be some of the defining characteristics of leisure, namely its association with enjoyment, freedom and autonomous ‘choice’, and its contradistinction from work. It is argued that these assumptions no longer apply in the contemporary context of late modern consumer capitalism. Furthermore, the marriage between consumer capitalism and liberalism’s primacy on the sovereignty of individual choice has elevated leisure to a moral right. This right to freely indulge one’s wants and desires—the exercise of Hall’s (2012a) ‘special liberty’—is becoming increasingly problematic and, in many ways, a source of harm in itself.

Second is the deviant leisure perspective’s root in ultra-realist criminology theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis and their conceptualisation of subjectivity. This theoretical framework is necessary for an understanding of how the conditions of contemporary liberal capitalism and consumer culture generate harmful and competitive individualistic subjectivities. This is something which is vital for a third key aspect of deviant leisure, which follows the call of ultra-realists to make the ‘return to motivation’ and explain why the contemporary consumer citizen is willing to act in ways and engage in leisure practices which harm not only others but also themselves and the shared human commons of the environment. There is a growing body of literature to suggest that the sense of lack, fragile narcissism and fear of missing out that is generated by consumer culture is deleterious to mental health, ontological security and anxiety (Lasch 1979; Raymen and Smith 2016). Gambling (Raymen, this volume), luxury tourism (Smith, this volume) and pharmaceutical enhancement (Hall, this volume) are just a few of the leisure practices discussed in this book which have damaging long- and short-term effects of which we are perfectly aware but unreflexively disavow. As Rob White (this volume) so eloquently ruminates, the question for many deviant leisure scholars is: ‘Why are we pooing in our own nest?’

Lastly, the chapter will consider on what basis we can begin to imagine forms of ‘pro-social leisure’. This, for the deviant leisure perspective, is important in two respects. First, it forces us to think about the kind of society we want to live in; the kinds of leisure practices and social relations we want to promote and encourage; and how such forms of pro-social leisure are either marginalised, corrupted or outright precluded by a society built upon the material economic and cultural relations of consumer capitalism. Second, conceptualising pro-social leisure provides an important basis upon which we can identify harmful forms of leisure. By imagining pro-social forms of leisure, we begin to enquire as to the function of leisure within contemporary society and how it can foster more positive, social and political relations which can contribute towards positive notions of human flourishing. This notion of a shared conception of the Good provides an objective reference point from which we can establish a basis for identifying forms of social harm or ‘deviant leisure’. For us, social harm is not reducible to a set of already-identified evils. On the contrary, as Simon Pemberton has written, we gain an understanding of harm exactly because it represents the converse reality of an imagined desirable state (Pemberton 2016: 32). Therefore, one of the key tasks of deviant leisure scholars is to develop a conception of the common Good and pro-social leisure from which we can derive an understanding of harm.

Does Leisure Exist in Late-Capitalism?

Leisure is arguably one of the broadest and most elusive concepts in the social sciences. Ostensibly, it is a remarkably simple concept, as numerous scholars have defined leisure in simple contradistinction from work. Roberts (1978: 3), for example, defines leisure as the relatively freely chosen non-work area of life and the obverse of work, while Kelly (1990: 9) argues that leisure is generally understood as a chosen activity that is not work. Lyng (1990) has suggested that many forms of adrenaline-fuelled, risk-taking leisure are driven by a desire to escape the mundane tediousness of life under capitalism, while liberal sociologists have emphasised choice, autonomy, voluntarism and enjoyment as the characteristic features of leisure. The diverse buffet of leisure arenas, identities and experiences presents emancipatory possibilities for the consumers to freely invent and reinvent themselves. Under this framework, leisure becomes a source of politicised liberation from moral conservativism, restrictive political-economic and cultural imperatives, or hegemonic understandings of gender, race and class (Hebdige 1979; Jayne et al. 2006; Millington 2011; Riley et al. 2013). Changes in the global economic landscape have enabled a democratisation of leisure beyond the privileged elites of the ‘leisure class’ (Veblen 1965). As politics and the economy have mutated over the past four decades in the wake of mass deindustrialisation (Hobsbawm 1996), leisure has been a central driving force in maintaining a real economy largely predicated upon consumption. A consumer society relies upon the democratisation of the ability to spend ‘time off’ and consume and engage in leisure in ways which transcend the basic levels of necessity to such an extent that they become a socially and culturally internalised set of practices and values (Gailbraith 1999). The ability of all citizens to consume, indulge in luxury commodities and be ‘free’ to liberally spend their leisure time enjoying whatever tastes, fetishes or desires they please has arguably become a marker of the advanced and privileged position of Western society. Therefore, it seems there is nothing ambiguous about leisure. We all know leisure when we see it and we can quite quickly reel off a seemingly infinite array of leisure activities.

It is within leisure that we are culturally, economically and even politically represented to be living in a state of voluntarism and exercising the freedom of our individual agency (Rojek 2010). While leisure is of significant economic importance for the maintenance of consumer capitalism, the idea of leisure as voluntarism and freedom of agency works for and has been championed by both the left and right sides of liberal thought that dominate the social sciences and political-economic arena. For the liberal-right, the proliferation of leisure industries and opportunities for self-expression are the product of a wondrous ‘free market’¹. For the liberal-left, the individual’s creative leisure lifestyles are an example of the hard-won freedoms of a tolerant, progressive and non-judgemental society. It is the realm in which the individual is free to construct her true self and identity, or even an arena of opportunity to express social and political resistance and subvert the existing social order from the inside (Ferrell et al. 2008; Hebdige 1979; Jayne et al. 2006, 2008). Consequently, the study and analysis of leisure has been overwhelmingly one sided. As Chris Rojek has written, one may hardly dare speak of leisure in anything other than celebratory or triumphalist tones (Rojek 2010: 1).

The primacy given upon leisure and ‘free time’ in contemporary consumer capitalism is not simply a product of its demand-side value to our real economy. It also has roots in the ethical justifications of modern liberal individualism. This is a broad church of moral philosophy which has increasingly underpinned much of political-economic and cultural life in Western society for the last 250 years (Deneen 2018). The liberal individualist human actor enters the world alone as a self-subsistent entity—a fully free, autonomous and isolated individual who chooses to enter into social relationships. Liberal individualist thought gives primacy to the sovereign individual who is free to pursue his or her privately defined notion of the Good life free from intrusive moral, political or theological intervention. Consequently, the fusion of consumer capitalism with the philosophy of liberalism has elevated leisure to a position of not just a social good but also a moral right. Of course, as the chapters in this book will show, the foundations of liberal individualist thought are deficient at best and a dangerous delusion at their worst (Davies 2017). Liberal capitalism has convinced us that we are first and foremost private persons rather than public citizens who, when we do choose to enter society, do so only to protect our private interests. We are currently witnessing the darker problems associated with this marriage between an economic system which has competitive exchange at its core and a moral and social philosophy which is predicated upon sovereign individualism. It has produced a society plagued by a series of seemingly interminable political, moral and economic conflicts which, in the absence of an ethics which can transcend the individual, descend into clashes of will and desire (MacIntyre 2011)—such as the desires of environmentalists for planetary sustainability versus the desires of the hard-working consumer citizen to enjoy two weeks relaxing in the luxury resorts of the Maldives. Consequently, these are conflicts which liberal capitalism itself is incapable of resolving within its own confines due to the centrality of consumerism to its post-industrial economies and its use of the ‘autonomous’ wants and needs of the sovereign individual as the yardstick of ‘liberty’. This is a negative liberty (Berlin 1970), the freedom from any prohibition placed upon the individual’s enjoyment, fantasies or desires which can be guaranteed through the marketplace. The result, as Hall and Winlow (2018: 114) describe, is a situation in which the myriad interpersonal, environmental and socially corrosive harms that emerge at the intersection of leisure, consumer capitalism and liberal individualism are seen as collateral damage. The price to be paid for our sovereign individual freedom is to live in a society which:

categorises and evaluates harms across a spectrum defined at one end by absolute evils and at the other by unfortunate but necessary collateral damage. The political ability to place in the latter category the harms that are the consequences of one’s actions allow such actions to be performed, justified and accepted by the actor and the electoral majority, even some of the victims. (Hall and Winlow 2018: 114)

In addition to these problems, a moment of brief critical reflection also brings into question the authenticity of the assumed relationship between leisure, autonomous choice and enjoyment in consumer capitalism. In contemporary society and culture anxiety and lack are the core drivers of a consumer economy which are translated into desire by consumerism’s influential advertising and mediascape (Barber 2007; Heath and Potter 2006; McGowan 2016). Žižek (2002) argues that there has been a reorientation of the super-ego towards a ‘cultural injunction to enjoy’. This is enforced by the threat of cultural obsolescence that looms large in the background of our lives, captured by the popular social media hashtag ‘FOMO’ (fear of missing out). Here, the super-ego is not the prohibitive paternal super-ego that actively attempts to temper our enjoyment, but one which compels us to enjoy, indulge and express our ‘true’ selves. While this may sound like a wonderfully liberating improvement upon a more Victorian ascetic subjectivity, this veneer of liberation is only a seductive illusion. The reoriented super-ego inflicts an intense paranoia and objectless anxiety on the subject. In a society in which the good life is organised around having a clear identity, expressing that identity, having fun and being happy, the contemporary subject is assuaged by constant nagging feelings of doubt and lack. They worry that others out there are living fuller, happier lives; enjoying and travelling more; or have a better sense of who they are and where they are going. This destabilises the assumption that it is in leisure in which we are socially, culturally and economically displaying freedom and voluntarism, leading scholars such as Lasch (1985) and Rojek (1995) to conversely argue that there is a certain