Tournaments of Destruction: Consumers Battling for Visibility

Abstract This research introduces tournaments of destruction, defined as staged and ritualized social performances involving entertainment and competitive rivalry in which consumers destroy valued material objects before a focused gathering. The conceptualization of tournaments of destruction is borne from a qualitative, phenomenological-based case study of low-income, low-power Black African male youth, who as members of the Izikhothane subculture in Soweto, South Africa, battle powerless anonymity by engaging in conspicuous consumption and the counterintuitive conspicuous destruction of high-end Italian apparel brands. Alexander’s theory of social performance provides an enabling lens to explore tournaments of destruction within a system of meanings, and findings provide insights about motivation to participate in a destructive subculture, the social performance of tournaments of destruction, and the agency and navigation of visibility within their hyper-local community. Emergent themes of spatiotemporal visibility, intentionality of destruction, focused gatherings and collective effervescence, and sociomoral condemnation contribute to understanding tournaments of destruction and other destructive enactments by social collectives both in pre-market and contemporary societies. This research extends Alexander’s theory of social performance and provides grounding for future work on destruction and visibility within contemporary consumer culture.