Consumerism, Globalisation, and Crime
References and Links to Papers
2025
Entertainment, Acclaim, and Profit: A Reading of Western Culture Through the Prism of Ecotourism
Three forces shape life and culture in Westernised societies: a craving for entertainment, a yearning for acclaim, and an obsession with profit. A trip to the Amazon rainforest I took in January 2024 showed me that these three currents also shape ecotourism. Much academic literature lauds ecotourism as an all-around positive enterprise: visitors learn about nature, rural communities are motivated to preserve their ecosystems, and being usually economically poor, locals also find a stable source of income. These studies, however, fail to consider the macro-forces in which ecotourism is embedded and which ecotourism simultaneously reinforces. Drawing on the philosophy of Indigenous intellectual Ailton Krenak in tandem with the Western sociological concepts of ontological insecurity, Disneyization, and consumerism, this article offers a deep critique of ecotourism as a sanitised, mediated, and commodified version of reality that fails to convey the essence of life and, instead, reinforces a modern, atomist, and mechanist view of nature as separate from humanity and a resource to exploit. Entertainment, acclaim, profit, and their convergence in ecotourism are destroying nature. Ecotourism is, in that sense, a prism through which we can learn about Westernised societies and their cultural landscape.
2021
Profiting From Pablo: Victimhood and Commercialism in A Global Society
Collective memory of atrocities is a fractured and disputed terrain. In this article, we empirically explore the complex process of translating violent events that took place in MedellÃn during the 1980s and 1990s into collective memory. It examines the conflict between MedellÃn inhabitants’ (in)ability to overcome trauma and shape their collective identity and the power of global media representations, exemplified by popular TV shows such as Narcos, to impose their narratives and consequently shape the present nature of the city. Drawing on original empirical material, consisting of ethnographic observations and interviews with residents of MedellÃn, including victims of narco-violence, this paper examines processes of memory commodification and its consequences on the global recognition of victimhood.
2019
Global ecological destruction
This chapter examines the following issues:
The formation of a global environmental governance and its implication for the world order.
The appearance and traits of a criminology of the green.
The three core justice stances within green criminology.
The tensions and paradoxes within green criminology.
The main economic, political and cultural drivers of global environmental degradation.
The consequences of environmental victimization and their repercussions over other aspects of globalization.
The grassroot responses to ecological destruction.