ABSTRACT
Drawing from Frank Pearce’s “the imaginary social order,” we suggest that the reproduction of the violence and harms of the crimes of the powerful are accomplished in a banal manner beyond the complex and varied relations within and between states and corporations. As Pearce suggested, “the nature and extent of these illusions (imaginary social order) are reinforced through a series of social relations” that not only include states and corporations in their efforts to reproduce capitalist ideals but also “us.” Pearce also suggests that theorizing about crimes of the powerful requires “demystifying” it. Consequentially, our primary focus is to “demystify” the “imaginary social world” by recognizing our own role in the reification and facilitation of these harms. We argue that we, as citizens, perpetuate the crimes of the powerful through consumerism and the willing consumption of hegemonic ideology, thus reproducing the very system of hyper-neoliberalism that is inherently violent, making such processes part of the banality of everyday life.
