ABSTRACT
It is this line of inquiry that I wish to develop in the remainder of the chapter. In particular, I intend to highlight what it is about human experience and social conditions today that makes the pursuit of excitement and transgression so seductive. More specifically, it will be proposed that transgressive behaviour is becoming seductive not only because of the excitement it brings at the level of the individual experience (à la Katz), but also, importantly, because it offers a way of seizing control of one’s destiny. This latter point is of increasing importance. For Katz, as stated above, the issue is escape from the mundane routines of everyday life (even this might not be incompatible with classic Marxism). However, the contemporary milieu is more complex. Not only do we inhabit an ever more uncertain, risk-laden world that feels increasingly out of control but, at the same time – in what is the cruellest of social ironies – late modern society responds with a series of constraining so-called rational measures that, far from creating order and stability, serve rather to bring about what I will call here the ‘hyper-banalisation’ of everyday life. What is more, this movement interacts with that perverse cultural as well as economic agency – the market – too often overlooked by criminologists with their relentless focus on official agencies of social control. For now, however, let us concern ourselves with the question of how best to contextualise Katz.
