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Not Keane on Prawn Sandwiches: criminal impoverishments of consumer culture - Applied Social Science Departmental Seminar

Date: 12 March 2008 Time: 4.00 pm

Martin O'Brien (UCLan) will present a seminar on:

Not Keane on Prawn Sandwiches: criminal impoverishments of consumer culture

Venue: Seminar Room 4 Bowland North

The paper explores the problems and potentials of a 'social harm' approach to the degrading impacts of modern consumerism. It outlines some of the harmful, often criminal, sometimes fatal consequences that attend the supply of consumer goods in contemporary capitalist societies. When a cradle-to-grave assessment of consumer goods is undertaken it reveals that many personal and environmental degradations are nothing more than the ordinary means by which objects are produced, distributed and discarded in contemporary societies. In order to unpack the mundane character of the degradations of a consumer culture I use the example of prawn production but my more general argument is that what is true for prawns is true for (almost) any consumer object.

Martin O'Brien is Reader in the Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice. His published work spans social theory, environmental sociology, social policy and criminology. Recent publications include: A Crisis of Waste? Understanding the Rubbish Society (2007); Criminology: The Key Concepts (2008, with Majid Yar); 'Criminal Degradations of Consumer culture', in Sollund, R. (Ed.) Ecological Crime and Speciesism (2008); 'Critical Criminology: Continuity and change?' in Criminal Justice Review (2007, with Sue Penna.)

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Who can attend: Internal