Capitalismo extremo and the Ibiza `dream`: Understanding the

Dr Daniel Briggs
Reader in Criminology
University of East London
Academic
 Liam: The only reason I wouldn’t go to Ibiza was if I
didn’t have the money. If I had the money at 17, I would
be straight in Ibiza. It is so good, everyone wants to go.
Tell me one person who come back from Ibiza and
didn’t enjoy it.
 Dan: Me.
 Liam: What’s wrong with you mate? Its got the best
clubs, the best music.
 Graham: [Putting his arm around me and trying to
sell me a vision with his hand gestures] Think about it
mate. You are lying on the beach, clear blue skies, sun
beatin’ down on you, drinking alcohol and loads of fit
birds walking around. You can go in the sea if you want,
go in the pool if you want. Everyone is doing what they
want. That is what is ‘happy’.
Some features of holidays for
young working class Brits
 Historically embedded as a ‘reward’ for participation in
working life;
 Class-based notions of holiday which are spatially
concentrated and subjectively constructed:
 Tourist – ‘package holidays to sights of mass tourism are implicitly
poorer, less discerning and lower in both intellect and class’ (O’Reilly,
2000);
 Traveller – taking in the aesthetics of the culture, learning the
language, etc (Urry, 1990)
 Cultural expectations associated with who should go, why,
where and what should happen - Holiday is constructed as
‘time out’ as well as ‘blow out’;
 Time-space compression – a finite period of time away from
‘what is’ (supposedly) known and done at home;
So why do young Brits get involved
in deviance and risk on holiday?
My argument
Current assumptions
 Behaviours represent some
sort of pathology
NO
 Behaviours highlight
unconformity and freedom
are self validated
 Behaviours in fact represent
NO
 Young Brits make clear-cut
‘free will’ decisions to
holiday in Ibiza and
continue to do so in the
resort.
 Behaviours are normal and
conformity and unfreedom
 Young Brits are commercially
NO
duped into Ibiza’s ideology
and pied-pipered into excess
by corporations, tourist
companies and resort
entrepreneurs.
So what’s going on?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Home life and the holiday hype
The holiday career and status stratification
‘You can be who you want to be, do what you want to
do’: Identity and unfreedom
The political economy: Consumerism and the
commodification of everything
Capitalismo extremo: Deviance and risk in context
1. Home life and the holiday hype
 Working class cohort, working in
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low-paid service sector, some
studying, others unemployed;
Uncertain life trajectories
(Bauman, 2007);
Consumption as a mode of beingin-the-world;
Living for the ‘weekend’;
Normalisation of drug/alcohol use
(Parker, 2001; Pearson, 2001);
Commodification of ‘experiences’;
(Hall et al., 2008);
Popular culture reflecting
expectations of habitus which are
reproduced as self validations on
behaviour.
2. The holiday career and status
stratification
‘Elite’ or
celebrity
Mid 20s
Ibiza
Sienna Miller in Ibiza
Aiya Napa,
Malia
Club 18-30 package
holidays
‘Chavs’
Faliraki, Zante, Magaluf
Late teens
Aspiring to an ideological social
status which has commercial origins
 Tom: It’s like the pinnacle, it like you do Ibiza and
you’ve done it.
 Lee: After [I had been to Aiya] Napa I couldn’t go to
Zante and I know if I go to Ibiza I won’t enjoy Napa as
much ‘cos I’ll know that there are better places.
 Dan: So are you prolonging the climax as it were?
 Lee: Yeah definitely...By the time I go to Ibiza I reckon
I’ll have a proper job. It will be a break from doing fuck
all. Like for the whole year if I had enough money then
I could do everything I wanted in that week and I won’t
have to worry if I do this, I can’t do this, I can just do
this, so this. I can completely smash it up.
3. ‘You can be who you want to be, do
what you want to do’: Identity and
 Identity
unfreedom
Dan: Apart from the resort,
are you interested in anything
else?
Valerie: NO! Why would you?
That stuff is for boring people
who go to Sharm el Sheik [a 
package holiday resort in
Egypt] and that sightseeing.
Dan: Cultural experiences?
Jane: Yeah, last year we saw
the sunset.
Valerie: And we went to
Palma [capital of Majorca] to
see the cathedral but we were
a little drunk.
 A new permissiveness
 Familiarity/unfamiliarity
 Anonymity of relations – personally
rationalised and socially buttressed
Unfreedom
 Default reproduction of home
behaviours already moulded around
constructions of what should be done
with leisure time;
 No ambition for life outside resort but
somehow comfortable with the fact
that the ‘good life’ is ‘on tap’.
Hyperconsumption
 ‘Cultural experiences’ are not on the radar for this group so
consumption is taken to new levels into hyperconsumption.
 We stand outside a takeaway near el huevo; it is well into the
early hours as we notice, lying on the floor, a man half
asleep/drunk nearby. The take away workers on a fag break
while mopping their brows, shrug their shoulders. One says
‘his friends left him, probably his first night’. I look around at all
the partying and fun which seems to be going on then at this
collapsed figure wondering how it could have happened that
two of his ‘friends’ would leave him in such a state? When we
approach him, we get a better look of his condition: drunk to
unconscious. He lies in a heap with his head against the door
and his body crumpled thereafter on the pavement; it is as if he
had fallen eight stories and landed in a pile. When we try to
wake him, he says he remembers his hotel but can’t remember
his name, and returns his head to the awkward door-resting
position. We call Ibiza 24/7 just in case. [Field notes]
Trajectory of holiday deviance and risk
First night
Last night
Weekend excess
Bars
and
clubs
on
strip
Bars and
clubs on
strip
Bars
Plane
Airport
Holiday
lull
Home
Holiday
Home
And it’s the same for both sexes –
first-night testimonies.
Female groups
Male groups
 Will: We don’t want everyone to
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know about like the petty stuff like
them licking each others’ balls and
that.
Dan: Petty stuff like licking balls?
Will: Yeah, the guy that pisses
himself, Stevie, he licked his [Bob’s]
ball bag in one bar on West End
[everyone bursts out with laughter]
Marcus: Licked his scrotum and
then sucked it under his foreskin.
[They all laugh]
 Gale: As we found out last night, I
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am a dangerous when drunk. I walk
into things, like last night I cut
myself.
Dan: Was it serious?
Gale: [Giggling] I was sitting down
and there was a metal bar above me
like and I stood up to quick and cut
all the way down my back.
[Shows me a large gash down her
back]
Dan: Hmmm, yes you’re lucky
some of your bikini covers some of
that – that’s quite big.
Transgressing unfreedom
 Thereafter motivations
become thus:
 Quest for individuality in a
space of sameness;
 Pursuit of acts/behaviours
which will result in social
kudos (reflexively revisited
as folklore – social/virtual);
 Exploration of behaviours
into the bizarre and
extreme.
Paulie: My mate was
arrested last night for
shitting off a balcony [one
of the 14 others staying
with them].
Dan: You’re kidding.
Shitting off a balcony?
What the hell is that?
[They all laugh]
Paulie: I know, fucking
filthy isn’t it?
Dan: I cannot think of
anything more raw.
But these are attitudes are not just
foreground attributes because
elements of the commercial
background are endorsing and
capitalising on them…
And here is where the ideology
works its magic.
Strains in the political economy
 Other tourism markets are fast drying up in San
Antonio as a mono-tourism envelopes the resort –
other tourists from other countries stop coming so
local businesses have no choice – open a bar, club, etc
(Billig, 1995);
 Ibiza’s tourist numbers are in decline;
 Ibiza is in competition with other increasingly popular
 Ibiza has a summer-only, largely party-oriented
tourism;
 So to buoy the economy, the local government have
made it clear they are attempting to ensure that
tourists spend as much as possible in the short
time they visit (Payeras et al., 2011).
4. The political economy: Consumerism
and the commodification of everything
 Complementing attitudes
for a ‘holiday blowout’ are
aspects of the political
economy:
 Flight companies
 Tourist operators
 Global corporations
 Private companies/resort
entrepreneurs
4. The political economy: Consumerism
and the commodification of everything
 Dan: So late in the night [at 4am]. What deals
can I get in here?
 Muscled-vest man (MVM): [Puts his arm
around me] Pint of Bacardi and coke, super
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strong, and one shot of sambuca, tequila, and
absinth all for €7. Can’t beat that.
Dan: Shit, so late but perhaps so worth it.
MVM: I know.
Dan: Let’s say there’s more of me – I know
some people down there who might be
attracted to that.
MVM: That’s if there is five of ya and if you are
getting wrecked, I will give you a free bottle of
peach schnapps.
Dan: And all I have to do to get my free bottle
of schnapps is tell you ‘I am getting wrecked.’
MVM: Yep and I will get you annihilated.
4. The political economy: Consumerism
and the commodification of everything
 And because people in my sample aspire of ideological status
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through consumption, there has to be some distinction
(Bourdieu, 1984) which will propel them to spend into the realms
of the ridiculous. Look at how much this young man spent in a
club:
Eddie: £500.
Dan: In a day?
Stevie: Yeah, in Amnesia.
Dan: Certainly is amnesia if you spend that much. Fuck me, that’s a
lot of money.
Eddie: It’s a joke, ain’t it.
Dan: Well, I don’t know. How do you feel about that?
Eddie: Yeah, well he [points at Steve] thinks its like monopoly
money. So why don’t you tell him how much you have spent in a
month?
Stevie: Nearly £6000 [in a month]. Going out, drinking, clubs.
4. The political economy: Consumerism
and the commodification of everything
 However, this mode-of-being is
endorsed by the
commodification of tourist
spaces because:
 The ‘new experiences’ to be
‘got’ are everywhere and
require money to enjoy them;
 People want to appear as if
they have one over on the
‘other’ in an environment of
sameness;
 It keeps them coming back to
Ibiza to reclaim the ideological
social status.
 Harry: Ibiza is the place where the wealthy go, the Superclubs,
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Amnesia, Pacha, Privilege’ – bit of both. They would never
bother going Malia or somewhere like that. That’s for really
young people.
Dan: So it’s a bit of both worlds. Different ends of the social
strata. And you’re somewhere in the middle?
Harry: Scraping through to the middle.
James: We’re at the bottom but we’re trying to get up [laughs].
James: To be honest, I didn’t think I would be 22 and in Ibiza. I
thought I would be like 25-26.
Dan: Why?
James: I wanted to be able to do it properly.
Dan: How do you do it ‘properly?’
Harry: In an ideal world, I would want to go to each of the
clubs at least once and drink and not have to worry about how
much it cost. I hate scrimping and scraping to get a couple of
drinks
Keeps them coming back, keeps
them spending money, and
therefore propping up the
economy and profit for the
Superclubs, global corporations,
tourist companies and resort
entrepreneurs.
5. Capitalismo extremo: Deviance
and risk in context  [An Irish PR man (IPR) comes
 Capitalismo extremo = a
sublime money-making
process lead by global
corporations, commercial
entrepreneurs, tourist
companies/organisations
which ideologically piedpiper these tourists to ‘seize
the moment’, ‘live the dream’
and engage in excess,
deviance and risk – all at the
expense of themselves.
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along]
IPR: Plenty of pussy in Eden
tonight.
Jay: Fuck it, I’m gonna pay for
everyone.
PR woman: I’ll sort your tickets
out then because we also have
Professor Green. Its gonna be
really good guys.
[IPR imitates shagging a girl from
behind and laughs about how he
claims he pulled two young
women in a night]
PR woman: I guarantee you, you
will pull in there tonight.
IPR: Oh mate, you gonna find
some hot pussy in there [laughs to
himself]. Want to see my cock?
Thanks for listening!
Questions and comments
welcome
Briggs, D. (2013)
Deviance and risk on
holiday: An
ethnography of British
tourists in Ibiza,
London: Palgrave
MacMillan.
Wish I was there?
Daniel X