I would have stolen those books. Confessions of a Mondadori Mystery Book Thief. Veblen, Bourdieu and the Mysteries of Consumer Society.

I’m talking about the books at the Feltrinelli bookshop in Turin, hurled onto the floor during the unrest surrounding the demonstrations on 17 October.

And yet, according to Feltrinelli itself, not a single book was stolen.

I found that rather puzzling. Perhaps because, when it comes to stealing books, I have a bit of a record. Two incidents, to be precise. Both involving Agatha Christie novels.

My first offence took place almost fifteen years ago, at a charming bed and breakfast overlooking the sea in Ancona. We had stopped for the night to break up the long journey from Calabria to Milan. Among the books available to guests, neatly arranged on a small bookshelf, I spotted a 1981 Mondadori paperback of Miss Marple e i tredici problemi (The Thirteen Problems).

I started reading it, but one night is hardly enough to solve thirteen problems. And how could I possibly abandon Miss Marple halfway through an investigation?

So the book ended up in the car with our luggage. It was only after we’d driven away that I remembered it wasn’t, strictly speaking, mine.

An unfortunate oversight, of course.

The second incident occurred a few years later, under remarkably similar circumstances. Another journey from Calabria to Milan, another overnight stop, this time at an old hotel in Rome. And another Mondadori mystery paperback: Giorno dei morti, a 1978 edition.

Agatha Christie again.

I’d actually read that novel as a teenager. My mother’s godmother’s daughter had lent it to me, but stumbling across it again after so many years gave me an irresistible urge to reread it.

One night wouldn’t be enough. So the book followed me out to the car, and only after we’d set off did I remember I was supposed to return it.

Two hotels, two cities, two novels by the same author. As Agatha Christie herself taught us, coincidences should always be treated with a healthy dose of suspicion.

The first failure to return a book might have been absent-mindedness. The second was beginning to look suspiciously like a modus operandi.

Was I turning into a serial thief of Mondadori crime novels?

Fortunately, my criminal career ended there. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that opportunity and, above all, the object of my desire never happened to present themselves at the same time again.

Which, come to think of it, doesn’t exactly speak in my favour.

Miss Marple, I’m quite sure, would have had a thing or two to say about that.

Perhaps it’s precisely because of my rather questionable past that one detail in the images from the Feltrinelli bookshop in Turin struck me more than anything else: the books were right there, scattered across the floor, within easy reach. All anyone had to do was stretch out an arm and pick one up.

And yet, according to the bookshop’s account, nobody did.

Perhaps because, at least at that particular moment, those books simply weren’t objects of desire. Or perhaps because desire alone isn’t enough to explain everything.

For a thief of detective novels, it was a particularly baffling mystery.

Especially since, on that very same 17 October, things unfolded rather differently in Milan. During the unrest, the Foot Locker store on Corso Vittorio Emanuele was looted. Nor was it the only shop targeted.

In short, in Milan, some people walked away with shoes and clothes. In Turin, those who had ransacked the bookshop left the books lying on the floor.

I’m not suggesting, of course, that they should have stolen those too.

But for someone like me, who spent years pursuing a PhD and conducting university research into consumption, inequality and social movements, that contrast was an irresistible clue.

Add to the picture an Italian-language teacher who now tries to inspire children to love reading, and a lifelong crime-fiction enthusiast with two minor offences to her name, neither of which has ever led to prosecution.

Clearly, I had every reason to launch an investigation.

Why are some goods coveted, grabbed and stolen, while others are simply left lying on the floor?

Desire: A Complicated Social Affair

When I won my doctoral scholarship, one of the examination topics was social movements. Among the concepts I drew on to analyse the origins of collective mobilisation was relative deprivation.

Put simply, what matters isn’t just what we have, but what other people have. And, above all, what we believe we are entitled to have.

You can have plenty and still feel deprived. All it takes is someone else having more. Or the conviction that you deserve just as much.

Social comparison plays a major role in shaping our expectations. It’s a mechanism that can also help us understand major episodes of collective mobilisation, including those associated with the French Revolution, without, of course, reducing complex historical events to a single explanation.

Now, I wouldn’t dream of comparing the storming of the Bastille to the raid on Foot Locker. Robespierre would probably have something to say about that.

But the gap between what we desire and what we can actually obtain remains a fundamental sociological question.

Which brings us to Thorstein Veblen.

In The Theory of the Leisure Class, published in 1899, Veblen described conspicuous consumption: we buy certain things not merely because they’re useful, but because they allow us to display our wealth, prestige and social standing.

Veblen didn’t have Instagram, TikTok or influencers. But I suspect he’d have found the whole business remarkably familiar.

Today, a teenager can spend hours watching people their own age wearing designer clothes, visiting exclusive venues and apparently living in a world where money is never an issue.

Think of limited-edition sneakers, bought for eye-watering sums and immediately displayed on social media. Whether they’re comfortable or attractive is almost beside the point. What matters is that the model is recognisable, preferably impossible to find, and that everyone knows how much it cost.

Veblen would probably have found an inexhaustible supply of research material in unboxing videos.

Everyone can look. Not everyone can afford to buy.

We’ve democratised access to desire far more successfully than we’ve democratised the means of fulfilling it.

And when social recognition depends partly on what we own, being unable to afford certain things can feel like a form of exclusion.

Bourdieu, Designer Trainers and Books Left on the Floor

At this point, I really must bring Pierre Bourdieu into the conversation. My apologies to anyone who was hoping for a light read.

For Bourdieu, even our most personal tastes have a social history. What we like, what we consider elegant, desirable or vulgar, doesn’t emerge out of thin air.

Our preferences are shaped by education, family background, experience and the opportunities available to us.

This is the world of habitus: the dispositions we acquire through living in particular social environments.

In Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Bourdieu shows how consumption and cultural preferences help express and reproduce social differences.

Which brings us to cultural capital.

It doesn’t simply mean owning a library full of books, perhaps purchased by the metre to match the living-room sofa. It includes knowledge, skills and dispositions acquired over time. It can also exist in an objectified form, through books and works of art, or in an institutionalised form, through educational qualifications and credentials.

Consider two children. One grows up in a home where people read, talk about books and regularly visit libraries and bookshops. The other encounters books almost exclusively at school.

There’s no guarantee that the first child will become an avid reader, or that the second won’t.

But their initial relationship with reading will probably be different, because they’ve had different opportunities to become familiar with that world.

This is one way cultural capital can contribute to the reproduction of social inequalities, even when nobody has consciously chosen those inequalities.

A book, in other words, is a rather peculiar object. We can buy it, collect it and even steal it (as my two previous offences, fortunately still unknown to the police, demonstrate), but owning a book doesn’t mean we’ve automatically absorbed its contents.

For that, we need time, the right tools and, preferably, a healthy dose of curiosity.

A designer shoe, on the other hand, can instantly communicate prestige and belonging within a group that recognises its brand.

All you have to do is wear it.

Of course, books can be status symbols too. Think of rare first editions, or people willing to spend considerable sums on a book they already own simply because it has a different cover.

I’d rather not dwell on that particular subject. I’ve confessed quite enough already.

But the question remains: which possessions bring immediate social recognition today, and who teaches us to value them in the first place?

Rebels Against the System? Or Aspiring Consumers?

There’s one last sociologist I’d like to call upon: Robert K. Merton.

I promise he’s the last one. For today, at least.

In his theory of anomie, Merton observed that society promotes goals such as economic success and prestige, while failing to provide everyone with equal opportunities to achieve them through legitimate means.

One possible response to this tension is what he called innovation: accepting culturally valued goals while resorting to illegitimate means to achieve them.

Imagine a teenager who desperately wants a pair of sneakers costing several hundred euros because, within his social circle, owning them means being somebody.

He can’t afford them, but he doesn’t question their prestige for a moment.

If he decided to steal them, we could interpret his behaviour through Merton’s theory: he would still be pursuing a form of social recognition, but attempting to obtain it through an illegitimate means.

Of course, not every teenager who wants expensive trainers resorts to theft, and not every theft can be explained in this way.

And here lies the paradox.

Someone who loots a shop to get hold of a coveted product isn’t necessarily challenging consumer society. On the contrary, they may have thoroughly internalised its values.

They don’t want to tear down the symbol of success.

They want to take it home.

Naturally, it would be wrong to attribute this motivation to everyone involved in the disturbances. We don’t know the individual motives of those responsible, nor should we confuse peaceful demonstrators with people who commit acts of violence.

Relative deprivation, moreover, doesn’t automatically produce deviant behaviour. It can also encourage political participation and democratic demands for change.

Still, as a possible interpretation, the connection between aspiration, consumption and deviance deserves attention.

The Mystery of the Books Left Behind

It would be easy to conclude that those young people stole shoes because they only care about material possessions, and didn’t steal books because they have no interest in culture.

Too easy. And not particularly convincing from a sociological perspective.

We don’t know why the bookshop was vandalised without any books being taken. It might have been indiscriminate vandalism, an impulsive act, or the result of motives we simply don’t understand.

And it would be absurd to turn the behaviour of a handful of young people into a judgement on an entire generation.

But there is a broader question worth asking.

Where do culture and knowledge stand in the hierarchy of our desires today?

Every society, consciously or otherwise, establishes a kind of ranking of what is worth owning, displaying and wanting.

And consumer culture, which I spent so many years studying, doesn’t merely satisfy needs. It helps create them, reshape them and connect them to social recognition.

These days, whenever I walk into my classroom, I’m reminded how important it is to introduce my pupils to other things worth longing for.

A book. A story. A character who stays with them long after the final page.

I don’t believe reading automatically makes people better human beings. History is full of highly educated individuals who committed terrible atrocities.

But I do know how precious it is to discover the joy of reading without having to be persuaded that doing so will make us more important in other people’s eyes.

Perhaps we should be questioning the models of success we present to young people, and the forms of prestige we choose to make most visible.

The Case Remains Open

Which brings me back to my two Mondadori mystery novels.

Two journeys from Calabria to Milan, two overnight stops and two Agatha Christie novels I simply couldn’t bring myself to abandon.

Not even when, in the second case, I already knew who the murderer was.

Of course, I could have returned them and bought my own copies. But that would have ruined my promising career as a serial book thief.

For the record, both books are still sitting on my shelves. And, to avoid any misunderstanding, I hereby declare my willingness to return them, accompanied by a suitably heartfelt expression of remorse.

Whether the establishments that hosted me all those years ago would be equally willing to accept my apologies remains to be seen.

But when I think back to the Feltrinelli bookshop in Turin, I keep coming back to the same question.

Why didn’t anyone take those books?

I don’t know the answer. All I know is that some things become objects of immediate desire, while others seem to exert no comparable attraction.

And perhaps we ought to ask ourselves who, and what, helps establish that hierarchy.

But if there’s one thing detective novels have taught me, it’s that sometimes the most important clue isn’t what’s missing.

It’s what’s left behind.

And in the ransacked Feltrinelli bookshop in Turin, what was left behind was the books themselves.

If there had been an old Mondadori edition of an Agatha Christie novel among those shelves, I must confess I might have found it rather difficult not to tamper with the crime scene.

Author’s Note

For anyone curious about my work as a sociologist, beyond my rather questionable exploits as a mystery-book thief, I’d like to mention my book Gli stili di vita dei medici. Dal dottor Kildare al dottor House? (Doctors’ Lifestyles: From Dr Kildare to Dr House?), published by FrancoAngeli in 2012.

The book draws on two empirical studies conducted in 2004 and 2009. Using data and firsthand accounts collected through field research, it examines the relationship between professional identity, consumption, lifestyles and social recognition.

Veblen and Bourdieu make an appearance there too, although this time they’re not called upon to investigate a crime scene, but to help explain how social differences are constructed.

The data are admittedly rather old now, but they offer a picture of a society in transition and still provide food for thought about the world we live in today.

Anyone interested in finding out more can visit the publisher’s website, FrancoAngeli, where a preview of the book is also available.