ABSTRACT
Relative deprivation was given considerable empirical validity in the UK by Peter Townsend’s various classic studies into absolute levels of poverty. A dominant theme in this body of work was what one might call the discourse of poverty: Townsend was also keen to promote the idea that ‘need’ was in fact culturally determined. Prior to his research, poverty (and therefore need) was typically defined by semi-biological standards (ie, poverty was related, inter alia, to starvation, disease, nutrients, etc). However, following the publication of Townsend’s various findings, notions of need became entwined with (more abstract) cultural considerations (eg, in one report much was made of the British need for tea!). Accordingly, need became defined by part of the cultural consensus. In the UK, of course, the cultural consensus was highly stratified (and therefore more constrained) by class factors; however, in the US, relative deprivation was more pronounced because of a culture with a more unified set of goals that all could aspire to (what Merton (1968: 200) described as the ‘cardinal American virtue, “ambition”’). This conception of relative deprivation has remained virtually undeveloped in criminology ever since. However, in his recent book, The Exclusive Society (1999) – a work which, in a sense, is all about the strains of late modern city life – Jock Young is keen to radically extend the concept. He argues that although relative deprivation persists in this ‘era of mass unemployment and marginalization’, it is being ‘transformed’: ‘It no longer involves comparison across the serried ranks of the incorporated; it becomes comparison across the division of the labour market and between those in the market and those excluded’ (Young 1999: 48). Thus, for Young, the transformation in relative deprivation stems from the fact that in contemporary society the ‘inequalities have widened’ and ‘the prizes have also become more unequal’. It is at this point that Young augments the concept of relative deprivation in a new and novel way that goes well beyond the Townsend Report. Relative deprivation, he argues, should now be thought of not just as a ‘gaze upwards’, but also as a troubled and anxious look toward the excluded of society:
Relative deprivation is conventionally thought of as a gaze upwards: it is the frustration of those denied equality in the market place to those of equal merit and application. But it is also a gaze downwards: it is dismay at the relative well-being of those who although below one on the social hierarchy are perceived as unfairly advantaged: they make too easy a living even if it is not as good as one’s own. This is all the more so when rewards are accrued illicitly, particularly when the respectable citizen is also a victim of crime. It is in the way in which cities are constituted ... The regentrification which has occurred in many European cities has added a further twist to this, for ‘chic’ by jowl, the wealthy middle class live, in many cases, across the street from the structurally unemployed. (1999: 9, emphasis added)
This is unquestionably a very important statement that not only fits well with the overarching ethos of Young’s monograph, but also goes some way to updating relative deprivation in light of the changing social formation and cultural dynamics of late modern society. However, if we set aside this important new take on relative deprivation, it appears to me that the main point of interest remains the changing nature of the ‘gaze upwards’ and, especially, the expansion of need as a discourse of justification:
[c]rime, whether street robbery or embezzlement, is rarely committed in order to reach the average median wage. The poor do not steal Beetles but Porsches, looters do not carry home a booty of baked beans but of camcorders, no one – outside of a tiny few – takes illicit drugs to feel normal. And the rich do not commit crimes in order to ensure a future retirement in comfort. That they already have; they do so in order to excel in their affluence and to exult in their edge over all comers. (1999: 53)17
While this insightful passage is highly important because it fully acknowledges the fact that the vast majority of crime within our cities is perpetrated not by the extreme poor, the homeless or the hungry, but by individuals whose motives are driven primarily by cultural determinants, it does not, in my opinion, fully explain what is happening to the idea of need within contemporary society. In short, the passage quoted above does not go much beyond the explanation of relative deprivation set out by Townsend. It is my contention that critical criminology must go further and develop new and more sophisticated ‘deprivation’ models that specifically consider the phenomenal rise of consumer culture since the 1980s (a task that Young has clearly begun by adding a ‘gaze downward’ to the concept of relative deprivation), for without such models, criminology will inevitably fall short of gaining a complete understanding of contemporary criminality.
