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Symbolic Survival and Harm: Investment Fraud and Consumer Capitalism’s Perversion of the Causa Sui Project

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Tudor, Kate (2019) Symbolic Survival and Harm: Investment Fraud and Consumer Capitalism’s Perversion of the Causa Sui Project. British Journal of Criminology. ISSN 0007-0955

Item Type: Article

Abstract

Based on empirical research carried out with those convicted of serious fraud, the current article seeks to explore the motivations behind engagement in acquisitive criminality. Drawing on the work of Ernest Becker, the article seeks to transcend superficial explanations of fraud which draw on notions of greed and individual pathology, locating causation instead at the level of consumer capitalism’s perversion of the contemporary causa sui project through its stimulation of deep human existential anxieties. It will be suggested that the acts of economic predation perpetrated by the men in the study represent attempts to escape anxiety through the avoidance of symbolic annihilation and that they are illustrative of the way in which the contemporary capitalism generates harm.

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More Information

Depositing User: Kate Tudor

Identifiers

Item ID: 10342
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azz009
ISSN: 0007-0955
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/10342
Official URL: https://academic.oup.com/bjc/advance-article-abstr...

Users with ORCIDS

ORCID for Kate Tudor: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-7646-3966

Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 05 Feb 2019 14:23
Last Modified: 12 Mar 2021 03:38

Contributors

Author: Kate Tudor ORCID iD

University Divisions

Faculty of Education and Society

Subjects

Social Sciences > Criminology
Social Sciences

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