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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.

DOI

10.1177/1362480616660188

Publication Date

2016-06-28

Publication Title

Theoretical Criminology

Volume

22

Issue

1

First Page

63

Last Page

82

ISSN

1362-4806

Embargo Period

2019-02-01

Organisational Unit

School of Society and Culture

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