Twin towers, iron cages and the culture of control

Abstract

David Garland’s The Culture of Control tells us more about the political culture of a post‐11 September world than even he must have anticipated. The core of Garland’s cultural argument is his elaboration of a Durkheimian concept of moral individualism, to which he attributes a trend‐setting influence lasting into the new millennium. He argues that, among youth, this new cultural influence has an egoistic, hedonistic quality, linked to a non‐stop consumption ethos of the new capitalism. He emphasises that it is the disadvantaged rather than the more privileged participants in this hedonistic youth culture who have been singled out for legal exposure and criminal sanctioning in a highly politicised binge of late modern penality. Garland’s prescient account exposes the first and most visible layers of social control that still hide vast inequalities in crime and punishment. There are important untold stories of the unpunished, more privileged participants in the hedonistic ‘party’ subculture of late modernity. The youthful patrons of this subculture, like their officially deviant counterparts, are disaffiliated and distrustful of conventional institutions, including contemporary work, family and politics. Garland awakens an awareness of our need to learn more about both the sanctioned and unsanctioned youth who are prominent and consequential players in our changing culture and politics.