Life and Strife in the Urban Night

This book offers a vivid, critical exploration of young adults’ experiences of the contemporary night-time economy, drawing on rich ethnographic research from Stoke-on-Trent. Adopting recent conceptual advancements in ultra-realism, critical criminology and psychoanalytic theory, it examines how young people navigate relationships, substance use, violence and consumer culture through their night-time leisure rituals.

Advancing our understanding of social harm, the book also exposes the deeper political-economic forces that shape youth behaviours, identity and the many corrosive subjectivities that have flourished under late neoliberal capitalism. Engaging with timely concerns around mental health, individualism, and the nature of desire, the book provides a powerful theoretical and empirical contribution to contemporary criminology and sociology.