Addictive Consumption

By drawing on case studies of shopping, food, gambling and drugs, this volume demonstrates the ways in which modern practices of consumption are rooted in historical processes and embedded in wider socio-economic structures of power.

Gerda Reith is Professor of Sociology in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow, UK. Her research interests lie in the intersections of sociology, political economy, public health and psychology, with a particular focus on the substantive areas of consumption, risk and addiction. She has written and lectured extensively on the empirical and theoretical issues around these topics, and her work has been translated into a number of languages, including Korean, Chinese, Spanish and Hungarian. Her book, The Age of Chance: Gambling in Western Culture (Routledge) won the Philip Abrams Prize for the best book in sociology for 2000.

Introduction: Consumer Capitalism and Addiction PART I: The Shifting Problem of Consumption 1. Luxurious Excess: The Emergence of Commodity Culture 2. Industrial Modernity: The Birth of the Addict 3. Intensified Consumption and the Expansion of Addiction PART II: Addictive Consumptions: Drugs, Food, Gambling 4. Drugs: Intoxicating Consumption 5. Food: Embodied Consumption 6. Gambling: Dematerialised Consumption Afterword