ABSTRACT
In the post-modern world of ‘consuming passions’ (Williamson 1988) there are a number of dynamics that are rightly the concern of cultural criminology. First there is the process of the commodification of everyday life, including crime and violence. Second there is the absolute necessity for the legal or illegal consumption of commodities for the reproduction of both the economic system and our social ‘selves’. Commodities themselves appear, as Marx (1977: 435) commented, ‘a very trivial thing and easily understood . . . it is in reality a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties’. However the relationship between the production and commodification process, and the distribution and consumption process, takes on a supreme significance in late modernity.
