Addictive Consumption

Skilfully charting the intersection of longstanding debates about the cultural ambivalences surrounding modern consumerism with the more specialised debates concerning the medicalisation of addiction, Reith brilliantly demonstrates their profound and enduring relationships to one another. Addictive Consumption is a fascinating and important study. Indeed, a tour de force! - Darin Weinberg, Reader in Sociology, King's College, University of Cambridge, UK This book is a banquet of provocative ideas. Reading it, you'll find yourself wanting to underline every third sentence, better to remember what the author said and how she said it. Here's one thought to munch on: capitalism sets us the incompatible goals of being both champion producers and champion consumers. People who over-achieve as consumers (perhaps at the expense of their productivity) risk being accused of having an addiction - to eating, shopping, drinking, gambling, sex, and so on - variously explained and treated by pathology experts. The personal manifestations may vary, but they are all symptoms of a deeper social disorder: late capitalism. After reading this book, the notion of `responsible gambling' will make about as much sense as the notion of `responsible cannibalism'. - Lorne Tepperman, Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto, Canada In an analysis informed by classic works of the sociological canon and some of the most important social theorists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Reith masterfully excavates the complex social relations concealed by the various discourses of addiction, demonstrating how the meaning and expanding scope of addiction reflect the contradictions of our hyper-consumption society. Although this is a scholarly work, it is a must-read for any thoughtful person who feels a sense of disquiet about our modern preoccupation with consumer goods and the growing problems of addiction in contemporary society. - Stephen Lyng, Professor of Sociology, Carthage College, USA The publication of Addictive Consumption is a crucial and important development for social scientists involved in the field of addiction research. Professor Reith examines the `shifting trajectories' of those commodities implicated in `discourses of addiction' within a historical, socio-economic and political perspective. In so doing, she provides us with an essential understanding of the contradictory nature of contemporary health and public policy interventions directed at the individual, which stigmatize those in the most marginalized groups, while allowing the wider societal environment to continue encouraging excessive consumption. - Geoffrey Hunt, Professor, Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research (CRF), School of Business and Social Sciences, University of Aarhus, Denmark Reith distills the literature on consumption and addiction into a biting, Laschian commentary on a system that encourages collective excess while celebrating the neoliberal ideal of individual responsibility. The result is a meticulous dissection of the cultural contradictions of a supercharged consumer capitalism that sorts, labels and blames failed managers of hedonism - the bingers, the obese, the machine gamblers - even as it empties their pockets. - David T. Courtwright, author of Dark Paradise and Forces of Habit This book tells a fascinating story of excess and necessity, the inseparable extremities of consumption in capitalism, from colonial exploitation to neoliberalism. It describes how control theory has developed from repression to brain-based addiction. Commercial capitalism dematerializes consumption, fuels desires but individualizes responsibility. An indispensable gateway to key issues in contemporary society. - Pekka Sulkunen, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Helsinki, Finland, Past President, European Sociological Association