This is the draft text of an article I completed during our staff/student writing workshop, revised from earlier.

Waiting for the delivery man: Temporalities of addiction, withdrawal and the pleasures of dope time

Abstract

A range of work published in the drug field has reinscribed drug user experience as embodied  – challenging researchers to think of pleasure beyond transgression and leisure, into the routine micro-time, embodied, material, domesticated, habitual, remote intimacy. The paper examines changes in the material culture of illicit drug use and addiction discourse in the light of changed modes of drug distribution due to the expansion of digitally mediated markets. The concept of dope time is introduced as one kind of social time that is a part of how opioid dependent users present and talk about themselves. Dope time is generated by both the supply system and the experience of addiction and drug consumption. It can be time spent waiting for drugs to arrive, time waiting for dopesickness to start, or to stop, or time in the clinic waiting for treatment. It is also used as a mechanism of social control, such as deliberately introducing waiting as part of treatment regime to test if the addict is ‘serious’. This paper examines the changing quality of heroin or ‘dope’ time in the context of the shift towards digitally enabled drug markets using qualitative and ethnographic data on user experiences. It draws on data from darknet cryptomarket users who buy and sell using the hidden digital infrastructure. It argues that dope time in the darknet changes to being much more defined by the infrastructure. There are obdurate times dictated by the delivery infrastructure, such as shipment times. Its salience is defined by the drug user’s sense as to whether the time spend waiting is intentional. If he or she regards delayed shipments as the responsibility of the vendor or due to deliberate indifference on their part then this time is experienced more harshly. Dopesickness becomes more painful, and anxiety grows where that is the case. One reason for that is that the user is concerned that the drug may not arrive at all. That feature of the infrastructure then changes the texture of dope time for the user. This is partly a matter of greater convenience and choice but also reshapes the idea of time into one mediated by systems rather than interpersonally.

Introduction: The Time Infrastructure in Illicit Digital Markets

‘When his junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for non-junk time to start’ (Burroughs, Junky, 1977)

Time is culturally significant in popular accounts the life of dependent drug users. Burroughs (1977) wrote of ‘junk time’, describing the drug users as in essence a mechanism for obtaining drugs, dependent on the internal ‘clock’ of addiction and withdrawal. Though this is a reductive and inaccurate framing, it does describe on element of social time and drug user. Junk time is one culturally salient element of the drug chronotype which encompasses a range of rhythms and trajectories embedded in consumption rituals, biographies, treatment systems, criminal justice processes and other structuring factors which shape the time of the drug user (Fraser 2006). Time can be used as punishment.  Deliberately producing waits for treatment is one way of inducing dopesickeness as a punishment for wayward addicts in treatment (Bourgois 2000). Waiting can be a clinical imposition and a clinical-treatment construct. Letting dependent users wait means they are ‘proper’ patients rather than manipulative addicts (Bourgois 2000).

In this chapter I intend to examine one particular way in which time is structured for drug users, through the times of the marketplace. I do this through a study of experiences of time among users of cryptomarkets, anonymous digital markets used for drug purchase. It matters because the way in which markets structure drug buying is critical to both the way in which users position and identify themselves and experience their drug use. The paper pulls together the findings of many studies of cryptomarkets that have examined the way in which the buying process shapes buyer identity and behaviour (Aldridge and Décary-Hétu 2016; Barratt, Lenton, et al. 2016).

The cryptomarkets are open, private markets hosted on the Tor darknet which take advantage of some of these features. Combined with distributed accountings systems like bitcoin or monero they allow transactions to take place in relative anonymity, with buyer, seller and host unknown to each other. Drugs are purchased and delivered through courier or postal systems, or less typically left at dead drops. Online drug markets create new contexts for dealing and risk, and Aldridge and Askew (2017) describe illicit transactions in this domain as ‘‘stretched’ across time, virtual and physical space, and handlers.’ The reconfiguring of time and space is a key feature which reshapes the experience of drug users interacting with the market. It changes the time spent obtaining the means to buy drugs, obtaining drugs and consuming drugs (Taylor 1993). For example, drug use patterns are changed by the cryptomarkets’ tendency towards requiring larger and larger purchases, encouraging stockpiling and self-titration over a period of weeks and months.

Developing that, this paper uses the concept of social time. It defines time as a multiple set of cultural, structural and disciplinary rhythms (Sorokin and Merton 1937). In that sense, time is created from cultural referents and material determinants (Munn 2020). Social time allow us to understand the combination of drugs as technologies, the market infrastructure, and users’ self and their orientation to a future self. It applies concepts of eventalisation, trajectory and career in order to do this. It tells us how online communities are developing these ways of understanding drug use through processes of asynchronisation and the creation of a community developed drug ontology (Bilgrei 2016). The paper does this in the context of the developing understanding of the interaction of human and non-human in producing drug use contexts (Dennis and Farrugia 2017). A range of work published in the drug field has inscribed drug user experiences as embodied and material. In doing so it challenges researchers to think of pleasure beyond transgression and leisure, into the routine micro-time, embodied, material, domesticated, habitual, remote intimacy times (Dennis 2019; Duff 2011). I aim in my work to examine the connection between materialised market economies and social time, by examining the combination of technologies, practices, users that makes up the illicit economy. Structuring elements are contingent and produce ontological instabilities and reconfigurations of users and contexts as they produce stabilities and configurations (Duff 2014).

Time matters because we are overwhelmed with technical and disciplinary times over other social rhythms. Neoclassical economics and data capitalism both establish conceptions of time that are critical in disciplining society and which create their own socialites, values and hierarchies. Extractive data capitalism presents its own time modes as natural and inevitable (Zuboff 2015). We often encounter this in technical times of nanoseconds and processor theft, the destabilisation of the gig economy and the rapid fire demands it places on labourers within it.  Licit and illicit economies of intoxication have grown more like each other in terms of production, distribution and consumption, labour organisation and digital services.

Markets function effectively when they are routinised. As noted by Collier and colleagues (Collier et al. 2020) the infrastructure of illicit digital markets is often hidden from the view of observers and participants. This infrastructure involves a large array of routine labour dependent on shared infrastructure. A wide array of services are provided such as hosting, site design, call centres, franchise management, data analysis and banking/cashing out (Kremez and Carter 2021). The growth of service crime drives down the cost of involvement in illicit digital markets for vendor and buyer. However this initial efficiency can lead to further inefficiencies which then require other services to manage.

To take a simple example, markets are typically thought of as places of instantaneous exchange. When a drug transaction is agreed, cash or electronic currency is transferred immediately. However this is not the case. Bitcoin, the supposedly decentralised currency, is often used for online drug payments. As bitcoin has become more valuable as a commodity more investment has flooded into producing (‘mining’) it electronically. That investment has however not led to the payment procedure becoming more efficient. The system has become bogged down and transactions can take hours to clear without further payment. The response has been to create a technical and social infrastructure to manage that using a combination of exchanges and trusted partners to make the system work. The transactions are stretched over time and embedded in this trust infrastructure (Bancroft et al. 2019).

In this chapter I explore further effects of the cryptomarket infrastructure, largely through the ways in which it structures the time of waiting – waiting for exchange confirmation, and waiting for drug delivery. The chapter began when reviewing data I had collected from a leading cryptomarket I noticed how often concepts of ‘dopesickness’ (heroin withdrawal) were showing up in the same codes as references to time and waiting. That led me to examine how llicit sociality incorporates platform and computational effects in the subjectivity of drug users involved in these platforms. It is central to how they inhabit these digital spaces.

Findings

Heroin’s bio-time

Waiting can be traced through the classic ‘waiting time’ of the dopefiend where time appears as a quality to be manipulated by the dealer. The queue is a typical ordering principle. Market time management practices are observable in face to face markets, for example a free for all can be contrasted with the ordered, governed queuing in a street market (Kleiman 1988). Time can be spent waiting for drugs to arrive through the delivery system, or time waiting for dopesickness to start, or to stop.

Withdrawal is the primary frame for understanding heroin dependence (Walmsley 2016).. It is central to science and subcultural understandings of heroin addiction. Dependent opiate users in the 18th century using substitution with alcohol to cope with withdrawal, or mixed opium with wax as a self-care method. Withdrawal steadily came to be viewed as a process to dangerous to be left to self-care, one that could be traumatic, deadly or just impossible for the user to embark on themselves. In the UK in the early 20th century maintenance was being used but this was strictly class based. The abrupt withdrawal method was used for ‘dangerous’ drug addicts such as prisoners. The Abstinence Syndrome Intensity scale was developed by 1944 to quantity withdrawal. Symptoms of withdrawal were objectified, no longer reliant on subjective self-report. The individual addict could no longer ‘speak’ their condition. Psychological dependence was excluded from the understanding of addiction at the time.

There was a change in the 1960s and 70s away from complete abstinence as an aim – critique derived from recognition that detoxing just led to addicts reusing immediately on discharge. No permanent cure was being offered. Two truth producing mechanisms were worked into diagnosis: urinanalysis and the Opiate withdrawal scale. At this point treatment was moving to exclude ‘pseudo-addicts’ and the reverse, addicts who claimed to be clean but were not. These truth mechanisms framed the patient as untrustworthy, a framing many addicts accepted.
 From the 1980s on – heroin withdrawal was defined as destablisiing risk management strategies, making the subject resistant to rational, looking ahead decision making.
Language is now changing, influenced by neuroscience, which now reunifies addiction as a set of neurobiological mechanisms at work.

When buying drugs for delivery waiting is part of the experience. In the Global Drug Survey 2014, 50.9% of users who had drugs delivered mentioned waiting a long time for the product  (Barratt, Ferris, and Winstock 2016). What that meant is subjective but this is something where the face to face and local delivery markets have an advantage. The explosion in drug delivery is partly a matter of greater convenience and choice but also reshapes the idea of time into one mediated by systems rather than personally.

The first time concept I identify is the bio-time of heroin. It is a combination of the bio-pharmacokinetic qualities of heroin which become known through the pharmacological repertoire and the embodied experience of dependence and withdrawal.

Users described a journey towards heroin use, in this account the use of heroin consumes the self in both the ‘nod’, the happy state, and in experiencing  withdrawal:

Basically I’m trying to say everyone is different, some are more hedonistic than others, some can simply handle the anxiety, some maybe even enjoy the lifestyle, everyone is different in their use so it really all depends on the type of person. Basically I use because I used to be depressed all the time and hated my medication, weed wasn’t too helpful either (sorry weed, still luv u), but once I started messing around with dope I realized I was either blissfully ignorant and happy all the time, or just going mad with cravings.

The experiencing of heroin dependence was an encounter of the body as obdurate and wilful. Many heroin users combined their use with benzodiazepines, as in this account:

‘Also for me after dose adjustmens it takes about 3 days for my brain to adjust and that is after taking it recreationally for about 6 weeks. In the beginning its a lot of fun but you sadly rapidly develop a tolerance to the hypnotic/sedative effect of benzos. After I successfully tapered off I will take a month brake and then only use it on weekends to smooth out comedowns from opioids or stimulants. It is a lot of fun on its own or as a little helper if you need to catch some sleep after a stimulant binge but taking it recreationally for more then a couple of days in succession is a waste.’

This was part of their pharmacological repertoire. I continue with a typical account of a pharmacological repertoire from a thread reviewing opiate vendors. A developed pharmacological repertoire is typical for experienced users who will have elaborate sets of drugs and drug use practices to manage.

“So if you run out of heroin or just decide to stop using, you will want to drink kratom during the period you would normally be [dope]sick (about 10 days for me). After that, you can keep drinking it (because why not… it’s awesome) or you can stop at any time because unlike suboxone, it doesn’t cause withdrawal or dependence — I would know, I’ve been drinking it with friends for 3 years and we can (and do) stop anytime, with no negative side effects. I can’t believe every junkie doesn’t keep a stash of it, its so cheap.. and legal!

In this example the legal high kratom is being used to manage dopesickness. In this account it is preferred to the prescribed substitution therapy suboxone as it is perceives to not carry a risk of dependence itself.  The time horizon is three years long. The extended time horizon illustrates how addiction experiences are built up and change over the long term. The experience is varied and reflected in interactions and social relations with others. The ‘we can stop at any time’ claim is somewhat belied by the fact that they have continued to use it through this period. The stopping criteria are relevant in evaluating the decision to move from one drug to another. Users of methadone mentioned in the forum that they found stopping difficult and cautioned others against it, similarly to this user’s comment on suboxone.

Avoiding dopesickness was one motivation that structured users interactions with the market. It was not completely dominant however. Experiencing withdrawal was not wholly disastrous, as long as there was a sense that it would happen within a manageable time heroin. A user on the heroin thread described this process of controlled waiting

“ alright cool so I’m gonna try to snag a bundle from [vendor] in the morning before he sells out.. idk [I don’t know] why I always wait till the last minute to get more. I’m totally gonna be sick till I get something lol. such an idiot.. i had the cash days ago but im trying to not spend so much right now. ”

Information was relevant to managing dope time. Tracking information gave some predictability to deliveries, but was often not offered for reasons of security.  This example from a discussion of heroin vendors describes the work need to make the drug useable which adds to the waiting time.

“ My last order with [vendor] took a total of 8 days, which set a new record for me. … I would not have cared so much about the 8 days if it was fire, but it sadly was not …  know I did not feel so great the next day, wasn’t sure if it was the dope or lack of sleep, but usually lack of sleep just makes me a zombie. I eventually cleaned it with some dry acetone and it took out all the brownish tint and somewhat of the iodine smell. I will probably do that for every order here on out. My delima now is i’m out and I am eyeballing the leftovers from my cleaning that I let dry in a jar, my mind says no but my heart says yes! Uggh I should just toss it. ”

This malleability and uncertainty about the drug as an object is common to many users. The individualised context of use was apparent in this account and more typical of darknet market users. They tended to buy and consume individually, and were attracted to the darknet because it allowed them to do that.

Rhythms and stretches

Time terminology appears a lot in drug users accounts in the form of rushes, lost time, blackouts. There is a close relationship with pharmaceutical quality and pharmacokinetics:

‘As I mentioned earlier, I started off with a 25mg shot. I had done no opiates for the past week or two, and the 25mg shot was the perfect amount of dope to get me where I wanted to be. I booted it up, and a few seconds later I had a very familiar warm wave of relief and euphoria slowly creep from my head down to my toes… It’s not a strong rush compared to other opiates like BTH that’s high in 6-­‐MAM or hydro/oxymorphone, but it is a very comfortable rush and the way it makes you feel is just plain fantastic.’

Users combine this with understanding of the platform qualities – the times bitcoin takes to clear, escrow to be completed, and deliveries to happen.

It also has very good legs, my first shot lasted me over 4 hours before I decided to add about 10mg more to my bloodstream, and I was still feeling good before I did the second shot. I’m currently 3 hours into my morning dose and I still feel like it’s at full strength. It also may be worth pointing out that I did a speedball shot this morning, and it was just plain amazing. I’ve got some weak coke, but it’s not cut with any active ingredients like amphetamines so with a good little line of that mixed up in the shot with the CW, it was the best breakfast shot ever. 100/5’

The delivery system also provided sensory pleasures. One heroin user described the anticipation and excitement of a delivery and the smell and sight of high quality heroin:

“ Within 5 minutes of receiving I anxiously ripped the letter apart (I’ve been sick all morning so this couldn’t have come at a better time) was going to test it, but opened my paraphernalia container and realized I’m out! I was not too concerned however, because of other user referrals. So I get [vendors] gear open (all shakily from w/d) and the oh so lovely smell hits me! WHACK! I put about ~50mg out, tooted and waited a few to see if I needed more… NOPE! The product looks exactly as the picture. …  Best bang for your buck EASY!

The system was not just about avoiding withdrawal. The production of withdrawal could be sought, but also warned against as dangerous as in this thread on naloxone where a user discussing using nalaoxone to shorten the withdrawal period:

‘“ this is a BAD idea:My understanding is forced precipitated withdrawals is not just a short cut to like day 2, it’s a short cut to the most intense hell on earth because the rate at which opioids leave your receptors has an effect on the severity of withdrawals. Meaning, it’s going to be way way worse to force precipitated withdrawals then if you let yourself go into withdrawals naturally. Like way worse. There is a reason ‘rapid detox’ is usually done under anesthesia and under medical supervision.I am not a pro so I don’t know any of this for sure, but please wait until somebody who knows for sure responds. ”

Alluding to a later topic there was a sense of the body being vulnerable and punished by the administration of naloxone. Naloxone could be a serious risk. On the other hand many users described using naloxone in order to avoid dangerous overdose and in that sense it could be a safety valve. Another use of the drug was as a time skip

“ Hey again! So bit of a funny one. I was given a naloxone injector as part of a drugs training thing (with 5 doses in it). I’ve always thought that could be a great way of skipping ahead to day 2 of withdrawals. well, 1= is that possible? The other thing is I can’t inject myself and my wife flat out refuses, thinking it’s a bad idea. She always says I have bad ideas and she’s always right, so I’m inclined to side with her a bit. Sooo… 2= what else can I do with this liquid? Put it on my tongue, mix it with a drink and swallow, put it up my ass? I’m guessing it’s a full on NO. ” (Bluelight)

Naloxone could be used to manage the stretches of waiting time that users were wary of. There was a sense of time being stretched in these accounts, as naloxone and fentanyl being used to manage this empty time.

Material and governance structure

There are obdurate times dictated by the delivery infrastructure, such as shipment times. These become part of the dope time. Its salience is defined by the drug user’s sense as to whether the time spend waiting is intentional. If he or she regards delayed shipments as the responsibility of the vendor or due to deliberate indifference on their part then this time is experienced more harshly. Dopesickness becomes more painful, and anxiety grows where that is the case. One reason for that is that the user is concerned that the drug may not arrive at all. That feature of the infrastructure then changes the texture of dope time for the user. It reminds them that the power in the relationship fundamentally lies with the vendor. The user worries that they may be thrown back on an unreliable face to face market, or have to go without. Dope time becomes upended.

This user describes the anxiety induced by these platform limits

Placed a little order and will report back, but interested to hear others thoughts. I ordered and supposedly the order was “shipped” from HIDETHEDRUGS 9 days ago. In resolution now. Told him it was going there if he did start communicating about the location. 4 days ago he asked for the zipcode. Then nothing until I went to resolution. Then he asked for the zip again and said he would get back after shipping everything out. Sent it with privnote this time and then he said he couldnt open it (though I got the “note has been read” notice. He wanted it again in PGP [encrypted]. Sent it AGAIN 9 hours ago. He has been on 6 hours ago. No answer. Still waiting.

The market’s escrow system, encryption and bitcoin’s gumminess all add to this wait.

Time can be perceived as being as a punishment, by enforcing waiting: waiting to be admitted to a programme, for treatment to start, for doses to become effective. In this example of prescription methadone

‘At the clinic (the one I went to) the lowest they start you is 15mg/day. But if .5mg of Buprenorphine keeps you good I would imagine 5mgs of methadone would be along the same lines… I was in the clinic for 3 years on 140mg/day, lost my job, and had to quit cold turkey from 100 mg/day. I was sick for a month. Methadone is a road best treaded carefully.’

Waiting time became more salient in the context of medicalised methadone and suboxone prescription compared to waiting for a delivery of heroin. Waiting for medicalised substitution drugs was different in two ways. It was mediated by a clinic or other service which required the user to adapt to the service’s timescale. It also was not going to produce a pleasurable experience but solely allay withdrawal symptoms.

Conclusion

Heroin’s bio time appears as a comprehensible, graspable form of sociality which is articulated through the infrastructure of the cryptomarket. It is one way in which a recognised shared cultural understanding of time in the context of drug use is reproduced and transformed through the digital market. The experience of time waiting for the drug is now distributed through several novel systems: the market infrastructure itself, the associated payment systems, the discussion boards, and the postal/courier system. As described at the start of the chapter, many heroin users have experienced institutional time as a sometimes supportive, sometimes alienating experience. Clinical time might be perceived as protective or as deliberately hostile depending on the context, prison time as explicitly punishing. The cryptomarket infrastructure allows users to share social time constructs and to some extent manage time themselves without being subject to the will of dealers or the governance processes of the treatment and criminal justice worlds. The market itself however is not purely experienced as a convenient, consumer focused infrastructure. It produces its own governance systems and demands which users also have to adapt to and incorporate into their novel sense of dope time materialised through a digital market.

References

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… there’s no real difference. If it’s irrational at any point it is fundamentally irrational.

The answer depends on what a market is and what rationality/irrationality are. In trade terms a market is irrational if it departs persistently from its real valuation. If a market is defined solely as the place of exchange then it can be continuously irrational provided there is enough liquidity being moved into it. The rational markets hypothesis presumes that the bill falls due at some point and that temporary flights of fancy and high or low spirits will eventually self-correct. Sociologists understand that fundamentally the market is a technical and cultural structure and therefore there is not necessarily a true valuation to self correct to.

One market might evolve into another type with the same formal attributes but different fundamentals. This appears to be happening with Bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies have gone through several stages and are now entering a new one. The first was the initial technolibertarian stage when Bitcoin was decenteralised, and mainly used by people with an ideological or early adopter interest. At this point it was not worth very much. Its technical overhead was low and bitcoin could be mined inexpensively. The second stage was its first use case when it was adopted by the Silk Road cryptomarket. That gave bitcoin its first reliable influx of new users and cash. It also primed the third stage, the bitcoin gold rush. Investors set up mining rigs to squeeze every last drop from the mining process, driving up the price and making it harder to use at the same time. We are now entering a new monopoly digital asset stage with Microstrategy and then Tesla’s $billion buys of the bitcoin.

This stage is one of insititutionalisation and respectablisation. Institutional investors like Tesla are answerable to shareholders and other stakeholders. There is now an incentive to manage bitcoin as a respectable asset, to clean out miscreants, and to shape financial regulation in a way that benefits these kinds of investors and protects their reputations. This may be the stage when bitcoin takes on its final boss form as a regulated financial asset which underpins the internal economies of major companies. To return to the starting point: we should not look for rationality, in the sense of behaviour abstracted from its context. We should look for reasonability and justifiability in how actors make financial and investment decisions. It is certainly easier to find.

We are well into the era of advanced, generation 2.0 types of malware. Adware, ransomware, cryptocurrency miners and others use social engineering and complex value chains with multiple functions being coordinated through them. Threats to industrial control systems, other backbone processes, and threats that use the internet of things remove the human from the victim loop. Malware is created through bricolage, the assembly of an object from mismatched things.

In September 2010, a new computer worm was isolated which appeared to attack industrial control systems produced by Siemens, the German industrial combine. It was unusual in that it targeted a very specific set of systems, those used to control gas centrifuges, devices for separating out nuclear material and enriching uranium; and its mode of spread, which used USB thumb drives. Though not unique that suggests a specific kind of target and aim. It was clearly designed to infiltrate secure systems that are airgapped. It was designed by US and Israel military intelligence to attack the Iranian nuclear programme. It had some effect, though limited and probably not commensurate with the expenditure of time and one shot security holes employed. The process of development used a patchwork of existing vulnerabilities. It used shared vulnerabilities identified and developed by specialised groups such as the Equation group within the NSA.  

Stuxnent is an example of a nonscalar threat. By design the worm does little outwith its target environment other than spread itself. A significant feature of modern cyber threats is how they work at scale. Stemming from a thoughtful email from one of my students about the imagery of crime in a Europol report, I noticed that the imagery used for serious crimes is often depersonalised and draws on the language of viral, industrial capitalism.  It characterises serious criminal activity in this large scale, industrialised, highly productive terms.

They often crimes that are low severity individually and hence tend to be unreported but have an impact at scale which is what makes them hard to prosecute. This focus on a scalar threat is a recurring one in many documents now such as Mills, Skodbo and Blyth (2013) which explicitly tackles this. To me we are facing two challenges: first, tools and exploitation modes are designed to scale up and down depending on opportunity. Second, distributed delivery means interventions tend to end up punching fog. The scalar affordances of the technology and the labour structure allow for effective and resilient threat industries such as ransomware to emerge and make them difficult to guard against. The ability to scale down as well as scale up is significant for the organised crime group’s degree of resilience to disruption.

Mills H, Skodbo S and Blyth P (2013) Understanding organised crime: estimating the scale and the social and economic costs. London: Home Office.

The Gift by Marcel Mauss is one of the most profound essays in sociology and anthropology. Mauss was interested in what happened between people, as that is where the social can be found. The structured obligation of the gift is a recurring act. Seen ‘in totality’ as Mass put it, the gift affirms and reproduces cultural values, social relationships and hierarchies. The millions of gift giving acts that take place each day throughout the world are unremarked other than between giver and receiver. Yet these acts bind and symbolise social relationships. They are systems of ethics, resource distribution, status maintenance, and conflict play.

Mauss implies (or Evans-Pritchard interprets in the intro to the 1966 edition) that there is a fundamental difference in the gift exchange between ‘archaic’ and modern societies. Modern economies have substituted a secular, instrumental exchange for the previous thicket of moral-ethical universes. He leaves open the question of whether the instrumental exchange is another type of generalised human moral exchange or is distinct in belonging entirely to the mechanical realm. I put my money on the former, though it does have unique characteristics. Anthropological data shows societies where instrumental necessities are exchanged using non-monetary, non rational means.

Exchange in the marketplace is every bit an invocation of morality and principles of the social system. We can tell that when the rules start to be broken. The reaction is not as one might expect to an instrumental error but a moral breach. As Douglas points out in her foreword to the 2002 edition the distinction creates the category of charity, giving without expectation of reciprocity. A free gift is doled out without social ties between giver and given to. It is a calculated insult, a power play, or worst of all, beneficent pity. Hence the meaningless ‘thank you’ given in return. A gift that is given in expectation or obligation of reciprocity is something else: it is an opportunity for action and solidarity. It presents a challenge to honour to be met. It is creative and socially binding.

Just a quick pro-tip for students here: referring to the subtle differences between two or more different editions of a classic gives you ultimate nerd points with us.

Dr. Masson and myself (Masson and Bancroft, 2018) examined some aspects of reciprocity at work in illicit markets. I want to recap this a little and examine how it applies in more explicit gifting contexts with illicit drugs. We used Parry and Bloch’s (1989) morality of exchange to show how illicit exchanges involved a moral accounting among their members. These elements of obligation to a wider ideal of the illicit market ecosystem helped maintain the resilience of drug markets in the face of a fragile infrastructure.  There are more coercive examples of the offer that binds as examined in the use of credit by drug dealers (Moeller and Sandberg 2017). Higher level dealers use partial debt forgiveness as a way of maintaining control over lower level dealers. In other environments drug users employ micro-exchanges of opiates to maintain a persistent gift economy which maintains a degree of solidarity in otherwise highly atomised and unforgiving surroundings. That can extend to a more generalised reciprocity which does not rely on dyadic exchange. As we said in the article, none of this is necessarily ‘nice’. Gifting can go along with aggression, exploitation and intimidation.

In what sense is crime a coherent action category? There is the positivist sense that there is a state defined category of human action that justifies coercive control and we can leave it at that. That approach leads us up some blind alleys as key terms such as human trafficking are then left undefined, or default to a limited reading of the law. As far as the illicit is considered it’s either a problem of governance, or a dark zone that exists when the state withdraws or lacks the competence to govern it. Critical researchers do not take categories as given and just accept that such and such an act is a crime in the terms and the way defined by the state and society. We should take the existence of these categories seriously as they have significant effects. We also need to delve into the naturalness of them. If they link in fundamental ways to survival strategies and environmental adaption then we’re in a little bit of trouble. Or at least those of you who think humanity is perfectible are. If they link in fundamental ways to the social order then we are in another kind of trouble.

There is some evidence of crime as naturally occurring category. Monkeys in field experiments and in the wild steal from tourists and the researchers who study them, using well worked out plans to do so. In one study of gangs of macaques at Uluwatu Temple, Bali, Indonesia, the monkeys were observed to systematically take items from tourists and then ‘sell’ them back in return for food (Brotcorne et al 2017, 2020). Brotcorne et al measure the rob/barter (RB) rate. It is a form of forced exchange or racketeering by the macaques. RB intensified in groups that were numerically more male dominated. The monkeys must be able to identify the specific tourists they have stolen from in order to extort food. The RB process is a set crime script. Take a non-edible item – presumably as edible items are secured by the forwarned tourist and the non edible ones are less defended – squirrel away and then reappear with it to barter.  Routine activities theory would frame this as offender, target, and absent guardian. Social learning among the macaque is key to honing this behaviour, avoiding numbing brute force hacks.

From that it can be deduced that crime is a competitive behavioural adaption, one that emerges in symbiotic human/animal cultures with certain characteristics. It is not wholly anti-social. It demonstrates and uses ingenuity, organisation, adaptation, and innovation. It socially involved as the macaques steal from and sell to us, recognising how much the category of inalienable property matters to the humans. Whether or not the macaques in some sense recognise the concept of private property, it exists as a category they can usefully act towards. The know some of the rules and exploit them.

There are many other ways in which crime can be fundamentally embedded in a setting. If in a community the only way to secure status is through crime; if social cohesion relies on gang influence; if social order relies on the underworld;  if an economy relies on a supply of illicit labour; if it depends on minerals produced in defiance of environmental regulations; if the most productive and highly capitalised sector of the economy ignores regulatory compliance; if survival depends on it, we can talk of crime as fundamental and necessary. This moves our focus beyond the ‘dark zone’. At one time symbolic interactionist sociologists thought people became labelled as deviant and adopted a deviant identity. Crime existed in the left over grey spaces of the licit world. Now, we see crime designed into systems, and crime that creates its own context, its own technology and architecture. Technical and social networks are crucial to the development of criminal capacity to organise effectively. The capacity to create hybrid systems in terms of state-crime relations, legal-illegal and organisational-platform/infrastructure is crucial. Like the macaques, social learning makes crime systems rapidly adaptive and resilient.

Our first autonomous robot arrived in the house last week. It is a wee fellow, hugging the ground as if cowering in the presence of its true master, the iPhone. A round plastic body, a sensor cluster, wheels and a vacuum are set off with a cheery burble. It is black, so the manufacturer has coded it as a masculine living room product like the television or the hi fi. The alternative is a feminine white good like the washing machine, a much more established robot functionary, secure in its indispensability. We find a room for it in under the TV, slotted in the pile of leads which I am sure connect to something but not quite what.

We went through the usual routine when taking delivery of a new pice of tech or software, of adapting ourselves to the machine. This process has been noted since Karl Marx identified how the factory worker puts his or her craft into the steam powered loom. Then the loom becomes the crafter and the worker its servant. Uber drivers know what I’m talking about. Ours is more prosaic, like the process where cafes are designed with tiling patterns that show up well on Instagram. An analogue filter is applied to make the digital perform better. The robot is sensitive to dangling cords and rugs and confused by reflective surfaces. The floordrobe is moved out of the way. Doors are propped open. Then the robot can begin.

Over time we become used to its strange shyings. One day it will not enter the kitchen. What does it see there? It runs skittishly through the living room and lingers in the bedroom, jamming itself into the corner and having to be lured out. It pauses thoughtfully in the hallway before returning to base. The robot’s friendliness and our anthropomorphising of it belie what it is. Unlike the old washing machine, it is one end of a vast data stream. Robots were once envisioned as universal servants, then as rampaging oppressors. Neither comes to pass. Robots do not serve us, they bypass us.

This post was sponsored by our robot overlords

Street encounters and digital encounters are hybrids. Trying to understand them separately will trip the ethnographer up (Lane, 2018). Lane elaborates the digital element to street encounters and the reverse using a multi-sited ethnography which traces encounters through street and digital domains.

Doing so means he avoids assuming the meaning of what’s online. In one case, the ‘respect’ code of the street is given another dimension as encounters can be recorded and reviewed. Rivalry is played out online, through Twitter, Facebook and Insta. Reputations can be trashed when it is shown that a previously tough player tries to dodge a physical challenge. However more context is given on each encounter. A video that looks like a one on one defeat with the protagonist backing down from a fight is later shown to be an unfair three to one ambush. It is therefore less fatal to the victim’s reputation. Boyd’s concept of networked publics is used. People living hybrid lives have to act towards many audiences some of which are invisible to them or cohere around their performances at a later point. A really intriguing picture emerges of mutual interrelationships such as. shared facebook friends and rivalry between opposing blocks or gangs. In a way the rivalry could not exist without mutual conduits – often young women – acting as weak tie players between parties to transmit threats, taunts and warnings and to act as a networked public. How male is the code of the street? How does the digital change that – it seems to be a space for girls to have a bit more autonomy and control, a bedroom culture.

In Lane’s work The Pastor follows lots of local youth on Twitter and does a kind of in person predictive crime analysis. He notes suggestions of violence and motivating the community around flashpoint encounters like when groups are going between parties, or when retaliation looks likely. He uses text to communicate with parents and Twitter to communicate with/monitor teens. Doing so bridges two networked publics, using a network of spotters – so covering both in person and online.

A critical part of the gendering of cybercrime is where it takes place. Where is it done: in sweatshops, industrial parks, in homes. We are still missing out on the bedroom where much cultural performance, and much cybercrime takes place. Domesticating cybercrime in terms of both target and perpetrators will lead us back there (Horgan, 2019).

Horgan, Shane Liam. “Cybercrime and everyday life: exploring public sensibilities towards the digital dimensions of crime and disorder.” (2019).

Lane, Jeffrey. The digital street. Oxford University Press, 2018.

… the heat is on the bottom level

It has been a norm that in the UK we expect public figures to be held to a higher standard than us schmoes. Ordinary folk can make daft statements, fool around, run over the family dog and still be invited to the family barbecue. Public figures are meant to at least hang the dirty laundry behind the house. Back in the Hanoverian era that was not at all the case. Epic sexual libertinage and self indulgence was the mark of the true aristocrat. The Victorians came along later to spoil things for everyone and introduce the discomfiting idea that the personal behaviour of the Royal household, members of the House of Commons and celebrity writers should be something we might seek to emulate.

Twitter governance inverts that. The lesser folk can be pursued and banned for harassment, calls to arms, racially inflammatory statements, generally rambunctiousness. Certain public figures, such as ‘world leaders’ and candidates for high office, can do this rather a lot with no fear of the ban. Twitter effectively defines itself as a public broadcaster for these purposes, with a duty to carry the statements of public figures, but without the duty and accountability of a public broadcaster.  They do not balance Narendra Modi tweets with opposition tweets, for example. When it comes to that part of the equation, Twitter defines its role as marking out an open public square. If you want balance, Q, you will just have to rage tweet your own responses.

Inverted governance is the norm in many places, reflecting a general wariness of the elites towards the masses. Sections of the population are in some instances seen as liable to bouts of ungovernable rages, and an all round threat to the public good.  One of the greatest public sociologists, Christopher Lasch, termed that the revolt of the elites. National elites have more in common with each other than they think they share with our unwashed selves.  Partly because academics are half in, half out of the elites (am I kidding – we are totally part of the elite) we often focus too much on competition between elites. The replacement of one part of the elite by another part may not mean as much throughout society as we are wont to think.

… in the abstract and also not literally in the concrete

It’s a delusion of a certain type of policy wonk that if you just tweak a society’s political institutions enough you will get the right outcome. A common reference point is the refoundation of West Germany after the second world war as an economic powerhouse with few external political ambitions (polite euphemism). That turned out no to be true. German political ambitions have been sublimated nicely into the EU where everyone can get on with pretending they do not exist. No harm there.

Can you parachute the Federal Republic into the UK and get the same outcomes? That is the hope of policy nerds. But no. Because there are no such things as political institutions. What we call political institutions are names for specific configurations of power, economy and culture. None is reproducible. Hitler did not come to power because the Weimar republic was not properly workshopped, but because it was politically brittle and unsupported by the political culture. They are not transferable between contexts.

The focus on institutions flatters us as policy nerds because it privileges us above all others. Yes, the globalists may exclude us from their clique at play time, and the populists may have taken our lunch money. But deep down we are biding our time., waiting for our opportunity to carefully balance powers between executive and legislative, and formulate the precise limits of judicial interpretation. We make a category error, just as recently when the UK media declared that British universities were ‘closed’, because the buildings were closed. Universities are not their buildings, and polities are not their texts.

That is why it is wrong to say that Britain uniquely has an unwritten constitution. All countries have an unwritten constitution. As the USA discovered recently, the ‘written’ part means nothing without the willingness of policy folk to follow the vastly greater set of unwritten and sometimes unspoken norms and conventions. The appearance of a working constitution just depends on periods in history when nobody tried to rock the boat, so allowing everyone to continue in their shared delusion that order is produced. That is how institutions function all of the time. The University of Edinburgh is a collective agreement about what we are. Writing it in stone and brick is very reassuring, especially when it comes time to put a pretty photo on the prospectus. And collective agreements can change.