Deviant Leisure

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

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2. Introduction: Why Leisure?

   • Thomas Raymen, Oliver Smith

   Pages 1-13

3. Theoretical Perspectives

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 15-15

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   2. The Deviant Leisure Perspective: A Theoretical Introduction

      • Thomas Raymen, Oliver Smith

      Pages 17-44

   3. What Lies Beneath? Some Notes on Ultra-realism, and the Intellectual Foundations of the ‘Deviant Leisure’ Perspective

      • Simon Winlow

      Pages 45-65

   4. Consumptive and Non-Consumptive Leisure and Its Fit with Deviance

      • Robert A. Stebbins

      Pages 67-85

   5. Real Ultras and Ultra Realism: Deviant Leisure Cultures, High Theory and Raw Realism

      • Steve Redhead

      Pages 87-102

4. Consuming Harm

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 103-103

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   2. ‘Be More VIP’: Deviant Leisure and Hedonistic Excess in Ibiza’s ‘Disneyized’ Party Spaces

      • Keith Hayward, Tim Turner

      Pages 105-134

   3. Substance Use in the Night-Time Economy: Deviant Leisure?

      • Tammy Ayres

      Pages 135-160

   4. Lifestyle Drugs and Late Capitalism: A Topography of Harm

      • Alexandra Hall

      Pages 161-186

   5. ‘The Fittest on Earth’: Performance and Image Enhancing Drugs Use Within UK CrossFit Communities

      • Kyle J. D. Mulrooney, Katinka van de Ven

      Pages 187-211

5. Digital Harms

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 213-213

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   2. From Edge Work to Death Drive: The Pursuit of Pleasure and Denial of Harm in a Leisure Society

      • Rowland Atkinson

      Pages 215-236

   3. The Business of Resistance: Feminist Pornography and the Limits of Leisure Industries as Sites of Political Resistance

      • Corina Medley

      Pages 237-257

   4. Lifestyle Gambling in Accelerated Culture

      • Thomas Raymen

      Pages 259-282

6. Environmental Harms

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 283-283

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   2. Loving the Planet to Death: Tourism and Ecocide

      • Rob White

      Pages 285-304

   3. Luxury, Tourism and Harm: A Deviant Leisure Perspective

      • Oliver Smith

      Pages 305-323

   4. Conspicuously ‘Doing’ Charity: Exploring the Relationship Between Doing Good and Doing Harm in Tourism

      • Jo Large

      Pages 325-345

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.

• Deviance
• Leisure
• Crime
• Political Economy of Deviant Leisure
• Gambling
• Leisure Studies
• Criminological Theory
• Social Harm

• Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK

  Thomas Raymen

• University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK

  Oliver Smith

Oliver Smith is a reader in Criminology at The University of Plymouth, UK. He has published widely in the field of deviant leisure, and is author of Contemporary Adulthood and the Night Time Economy (Palgrave, 2014). His current research examines the capacity for environmental harm in the context of commodified leisure markets.

Thomas Raymen is Senior Lecturer in criminology at Northumbria University, UK. His interests span the fields of criminology, moral philosophy, leisure studies, cultural geography and urban studies. Thomas is the author of Parkour, Deviance and Leisure in the Late Capitalist City (Emerald, 2018), and his research has focused upon a criminological exploration of the concept of 'deviant leisure'. He is currently focused on developing a theory of social harm rooted in a post-liberal ethics.

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