ABSTRACT
This relationship between consumer goods and the construction of self in late modernity is of great importance. So encompassing is the ethos of consumerism within (late) capitalist society that, for many individuals, self-identity and selfrealisation can now only be accomplished through material means – money (in the form of commodities) as ‘self-laundering’? Thus, identity, as Christopher Lasch (1979) brilliantly pointed out, takes on the form of a ‘consumption-oriented narcissism’. Twenty-five years after Lasch’s seminal monograph, the full force of his message is only now being felt. In the school playground, the pub or restaurant, the nightclub and on the street corner, products and material possessions are now the primary indices of identity for virtually all strata of society, establishing status but, more importantly, imbuing individuals with a (narcissistic) sense of who they are. This is what it means to live in a consumer culture. More problematically, much street crime – from shoplifting to street robbery – should therefore be seen for exactly what it is: neither as a desperate act of poverty nor as a defiant gesture against the system, but nonetheless as a transgressive act that, at one level, enables a relative (or perceived) material deficit to be bridged and, at another level, represents a form of identity construction – if it’s true of shopping then it’s also true of shoplifting! Consequently, street criminals in many instances can be seen simply as consuming machines, ‘urban entrepreneurs’ whose primary aim is the accrual of the latest mobile phone or designer accessory8 – items that in today’s consumer society are no longer simply desirable but are importantly perceived (especially by young people) as essential to individual identity, shifting as that may be from moment to moment. However, before exploring any further the specific relationships that now exist between consumer culture and urban crime, we must return to the question of the inherently contradictory and dichotomous nature of late modern consumerism.
