‘It’s what you have to do!’: Exploring the role of high-risk edgework and advanced marginality in a young man’s motivation for crime

Abstract

By focusing on one young man’s self-presentations in a secure care unit for young offenders in Denmark, this article explores how his contradictory and incoherent self-presentations can be analysed as meaningful. Drawing on Stephen Lyng’s theory of high-risk edgework and Loïc Wacquant’s theory of advanced marginalization, it is argued that this young man’s engagement in youth crime cannot be fully understood by focusing only on the criminal experience itself. Also, specific social and symbolic relations must be integrated into the analysis to understand his engagement in crime. The article argues that although edgework theory is compelling, it needs further development if it is to capture the full complexity of young people’s motivation for crime.

Keywords

Advanced marginality crime edgework self-presentation youth

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Anderson

(1999) Code of the Street: Decency, Violence and the Moral Life of the Inner City. New York: WW Norton.

Balvig

(2011) Lovlydig ungdom [Law-Abiding Youth]. København: Det Kriminal Præventive Råd (Crime Prevention Council).

Bauman

(2001) Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bauman

(2004) Identity. Cambridge: Polity.

Beck

(1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: SAGE.

Bourgois

(2003) In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Collison

(1996) In search of the high life: Drugs, crime, masculinities and consumption. British Journal of Criminology 36(3): 428–444.

Corrigan

(1975) Doing nothing. In: Hall

Jefferson

(eds) Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 84–87.

Danske Regioner (Danish Regions) (2010) Statistik for de sikrede institutioner 2009 [Secure Care Statistics 2009]. København: Danske Regioner.

10.

Desmond

(2006) Becoming a firefighter. Ethnography 7(4): 387–421.

11.

Earle

(2011) Boys’ zone stories: Perspectives from a young men’s prison. Criminology and Criminal Justice 11(2): 129–143.

12.

Ferrell

Milovanovic

Lyng

(2001) Edgework, media practices, and the elongation of meaning: A theoretical ethnography of the Bridge Day Event. Theoretical Criminology 5(2): 177–202.

13.

Gadd

Farrall

(2004) Criminal careers, desistance and subjectivity: Interpreting men’s narratives of change. Theoretical Criminology 8(2): 123–156.

14.

Giddens

(1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

15.

Goffman

(1963) Stigma. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

16.

Goffman

(1990 [1959]) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin Books.

17.

Gunter

(2010) Growing Up Bad? Black Youth, Road Cultures and Badness in an East London Neighbourhood. London: The Tufnell Press.

18.

Hall

Jefferson

(1975) Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. Abingdon: Routledge.

19.

Hallsworth

Silverstone

(2009) ‘That’s life innit’: A British perspective on guns, crime and social order. Criminology and Criminal Justice 9(3): 359–377.

20.

Halsey

Young

(2006) ‘Our desires are ungovernable’: Writing graffiti in urban space. Theoretical Criminology 10(3): 275–306.

21.

Hansen

(2011) Fattigdom i EU-landene – og dansk fattigdom i europærisk perspektiv [Poverty in the EU Countries – and Danish Poverty in a European Perspective]. København: CASA.

22.

Hayward

(2002) The vilification and pleasures of youthful transgression. In: Mancie

Hughes

McLaughlin

(eds) Youth Justice: Critical Readings. London: SAGE.

23.

Hayward

(2007) Situational crime and its discontents: Rational choice theory versus the ‘culture of now’. Social Policy & Administration 41(3): 232–250.

24.

Jensen

(2010) Masculinity at the margins: Othering, marginality and resistance among young, marginalized ethnic minority men. Nordic Journal for Masculinity Studies 5(1): 6–26.

25.

Justitsministeriet (The Danish Ministry of Justice) (2009) Indsatsen mod ungdomskriminalitet. Betænkning nr. 1508 [Initiatives against Youth Crime. Report nr. 1508]. København: Justitsministeriet.

26.

Katz

(1988) Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil: A Chilling Exploration of the Criminal Mind – from Juvenile Delinquency to Cold-Blooded Murder. New York: Basic Books.

27.

Lyng

(1990) Edgework: A social psychological analysis of voluntary risk taking. American Journal of Sociology 95(4): 851–886.

28.

Lyng

(1993) Dysfunctional risk taking: Criminal behaviour as edgework. In: Bell

Bell

(eds) Adolescent Risk Taking. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, pp. 107–131.

29.

Lyng

(2004) Crime, edgework and corporeal transaction. Theoretical Criminology 8(3): 359–375.

30.

Lyng

(2005a) Edgework and the risk-taking experience. In: Lyng

(ed.) Edgework: The Sociology of Risk-Taking. New York: Routledge, pp. 3–14.

31.

Lyng

(2005b) Sociology at the edge: Social theory and voluntary risk taking. In: Lyng

(ed.) Edgework: The Sociology of Risk-Taking. New York: Routledge, pp. 17–50.

32.

Lyng

(ed.) (2005c) Edgework: The Sociology of Risk-Taking. New York: Routledge.

33.

MacDonald

Shildrick

Webster

Simpson

(2005) Growing up in poor neighbourhoods: The significance of class and place in the extended transitions of ‘socially excluded’ young adults. Sociology 39(5): 873–891.

34.

Miller

(2005) Adolescents on the edge: The sensual side of delinquency. In: Lyng

(ed.) Edgework: The Sociology of Risk-Taking. New York: Routledge, pp. 153–171.

35.

O’Mally

Mugford

(1994) Crime, excitement and modernity. In: Barak

(ed.) Varieties of Criminology. Westport, CT: Praeger.

36.

Phillips

(2008) Negotiating identities. Theoretical Criminology 12(3): 313–331.

37.

Pitts

(2008) Reluctant Gangsters: The Changing Face of Youth Crime. Cullompton: Willan.

38.

Presdee

(2004) Cultural criminology: The long and winding road. Theoretical Criminology 8(3): 275–285.

39.

Sandberg

(2009) Gangster, victim or both? The interdiscursive construction of sameness and difference in self-presentation. British Journal of Sociology 60(3): 523–542.

40.

Sykes

Matza

(1957) Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency. American Sociological Review 22: 664–670.

41.

Topalli

(2005) When being good is bad: An explanation of neutralisation theory. Criminology 43: 797–836.

42.

Treadwell

Garland

(2011) Masculinity, marginalisation and violence: A case study of the English Defence League. British Journal of Criminology 52(4): 621–634.

43.

Wacquant

(1998) Inside the zone: The social art of the hustler in the black American ghetto. Theory, Culture & Society 15(2): 1–36.

44.

Wacquant

(2001) Deadly symbiosis: When ghetto and prison meet and mesh. Punishment & Society 3(1): 95–133.

45.

Wacquant

(2004) Body & Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

46.

Wacquant

(2008) Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. Cambridge: Polity Press.

47.

Wacquant

(2009) Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

48.

Weber

(2003 [1902]) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Dover Publications.

49.

Winlow

Hall

(2006) Violent Night: Urban Leisure and Contemporary Culture. Oxford: Berg.

50.

Winlow

Hall

(2009) Retaliate first: Memory, humiliation and male violence. Crime, Media, Culture 5(3): 285–304.

51.

Young

(1999) The Exclusive Society. London: SAGE.

52.

Young

(2003) Merton with energy, Katz with structure: The sociology of vindictiveness and the criminology of transgression. Theoretical Criminology 7(3): 388–414.