The Globalisation of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit - Hardcover

Alexander, Bruce

4.34

189 ratings by Goodreads

9780199230129: The Globalisation of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199230129 ISBN 13: 9780199230129

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2008

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The Globalisation of Addiction presents a radical rethink about the nature of addiction. Scientific medicine has failed when it comes to addiction. There are no reliable methods to cure it, prevent it, or take the pain out of it. There is no durable consensus on what addiction is, what causes it, or what should be done about it. Meanwhile, it continues to increase around the world. This book argues that the cause of this failure to control addiction is that the conventional wisdom of the 19th and 20th centuries focused too single-mindedly on the afflicted individual addict. Although addiction obviously manifests itself in individual cases, its prevalence differs dramatically between societies. For example, it can be quite rare in a society for centuries, and then become common when a tribal culture is destroyed or a highly developed civilization collapses. When addiction becomes commonplace in a society, people become addicted not only to alcohol and drugs, but to a thousand other destructive pursuits: money, power, dysfunctional relationships, or video games. A social perspective on addiction does not deny individual differences in vulnerability to addiction, but it removes them from the foreground of attention, because social determinants are more powerful. This book shows that the social circumstances that spread addiction in a conquered tribe or a falling civilisation are also built into today's globalizing free-market society. A free-market society is magnificently productive, but it subjects people to irresistible pressures towards individualism and competition, tearing rich and poor alike from the close social and spiritual ties that normally constitute human life. People adapt to their dislocation by finding the best substitutes for a sustaining social and spiritual life that they can, and addiction serves this function all too well. The book argues that the most effective response to a growing addiction problem is a social and political one, rather than an individual one. Such a solution would not put the doctors, psychologists, social workers, policemen, and priests out of work, but it would incorporate their practices in a larger social project. The project is to reshape society with enough force and imagination to enable people to find social integration and meaning in everyday life. Then great numbers of them would not need to fill their inner void with addictions.

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Review:

A highly informative, well written and soundly researched book. (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives)

This scholarly and extremely entertaining book... is a well-reasoned and illuminating read that will challenge many people's views on the world that we live in, as well as providing a refreshing alternative to a clinical view of addiction dominated by genetics and neuroscience. (The British Journal of Psychiatry)

...a considerable work, highly ambitious in its scope, impressive in its multidisciplinary scholarship, clear in its structure and generous in its references...a fundamental critique of the 20th century view of addiction. (nth position online)

This fascinating and unique book explores the problem of addiction using a nontraditional approach...a refreshing look at an age-old problem. (Doody's Notes)

This is, without a doubt, the most intriguing and painstaking book on addiction I have read for some time..."The Globalisation of Addiction" is scholarly, meticulously researched, passionately critical of the free-market economy, biased, speculative, selective, and quite wonderful...highly recommended...this is one of the most remarkable addiction texts of the decade. (John B. Davies, Addiction Research and Theory)

Book Description:

Highly commended in the Mental Health Category of the BMA Book Awards 2009

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