Christopher Stanley

Teenage kicks: Urban narratives of dissent not deviance

This article utilises contemporary social and cultural theory in an interrogation of the ideological construction of activities nominated as social problems. Specifically the article analyses the events of computer hacking, joyriding and raving, activities which are prevalent within youth culture. These activities have been subjected to criminal sanction and regulation and therefore bought within an arena of (governmental) surveillance. This article assesses these events not within the paradigms of criminology and deviancy but as examples of an affirmative cultural politics operative through the technologies of inversion and appropriation which are in excess. These subcultural events assume the status of resistant practices not in terms of ideology but rather in terms of alternative narratives of dissensus representing possible moments of community.

Speculators: Culture, economy and the legitimation of deviance

This article is a continuation and development of the authors thesis regarding deviant activity in the financial markets of the City of London. The thesis proposes that deviant activity in financial institutions has become legitimated in the sense of the failure of external regulatory controls to enforce order against the internally generated subcultural codes of practice which have developed consequent upon the forces of economic imperative (the ideology of excellence in the enterprise culture) and globalisation (the technological revolution). The thesis originally dealt with the period between 1984–1989 which was one characterised as “Casino Capitalism”. The current development of the thesis examines its continued relevance and proposes number of additional supporting elements and examples in its deployment as a critique of deviant financial activity.