An in depth sociological, historical and personal analysis of the concept and reality of organised crime in the UK. With interviews from thieves, dealers and criminal entrepreneurs, the book explores the flexible nature of the criminal market, the constructed nature of the notion of organised crime, and the normalisation of criminality.

• 1: Introduction: Dubious Ideologues and Illegal Entrepreneurs


• 2: A Malady of Modernity: Constructing Organised Crime in the UK


• 3: Malignant Cosmopolitanism: Precursors of Organised Crime


• 4: Mutant Proletarians: Class and Territoriality


• 5: The Houses In-Between: The Neighbourhood Firm on a Shifting Terrain


• 6: Small Faces: Entrepreneurial Youth and the State of Dogtown


• 7: Populating the Underworld: Armed Robbery


• 8: The Same Money?: Locating the Entrepreneurial Habitas


• 9: A Sense of Order: Violence, Rumour and Gossip


• 10: The Cosmopolitan Criminal


• 11: Concluding: A Community of Practice

Dick Hobbs is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Criminology Centre at the University of Essex, and Professor of Sociology at the University of Western Sydney. He previously held Chairs at the University of Durham and the London School of Economics. An ethnographer by trade, he is sceptical of the rise of criminology and has published widely on the sociologies of deviance, of East London, organized and professional crime, the night-time economy and the 2012 Olympics. His previous publications include Doing the Business (Oxford, 1988), Bad Business (Oxford, 1995), and Bouncers (Oxford, 2003 with Philip Hadfield, Stuart Lister and Simon Winlow). He is currently working on a number of publications based upon the 2012 London Olympics.