Proceeding from a theoretical perspective, this chapter examines the various relationships that exist between consumer culture and crime. The chapter starts by looking at criminology’s past, and a short review of some of the main theories/theorists that have actually trained attention on consumerism as a criminogenic phenomenon. This section also includes a critique of the supposed oppositional potential of consumerism that dominated the social sciences until relatively recently. Turning to the present, the chapter then introduces three distinct but complementary perspectives that offer a more useful and critical explanation of ‘the crime-consumerism nexus’. First, cultural criminology addresses the criminogenic impact of global capitalism at the level of cultural discourse and everyday transgression. Second, ultra-realist criminology identifies the damage caused by consumer capitalism, and more specifically how the dominance of neoliberal ideology shapes the deep-rooted desires and drives behind much identity-driven criminality. Finally, the deviant leisure perspective draws on both these positions to illustrate how dominant forms of commodified leisure drive a range of social, environmental, and individual harms. The relationship between crime and consumerism is not a simple one but, as this chapter argues, it is one that demands serious and critical criminological attention.
Chapter
25. Crime and consumer culture
Keith Hayward and Oliver Smith
Chapter
1. The nature and sources of commercial law
This chapter provides an overview of the nature and sources of commercial law. It explores the definition of commercial law, referencing how it is notoriously difficult to define. Commercial law draws on principles from a number of different areas of jurisprudence, such as contract law, criminal law, and principles from tort, property, equity, and trusts. The key challenge for commercial law is therefore to strike the right balance between the competing principles regardless of how they overlap. The chapter also considers the impact and significance of consumerism, internationalisation, digitalisation, certainty, and good faith on commercial law. It then discusses the role of equity in commercial law.
