The saturated society : governing risk and lifestyles in consumer culture / Pekka Sulkunen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sulkunen, Pekka.

Series:

Theory, culture & society (Unnumbered)

Theory, culture & society

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lifestyles--Health aspects.

Lifestyles.

Health behavior--Public opinion.

Health behavior.

Health promotion--Political aspects.

Health promotion.

Health promotion--Social aspects.

Social policy.

Physical Description:

x, 210 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Los Angeles ; London : SAGE, 2009.

Summary:

Why in a modern society educated in the dangers of alcohol, smoking and drug abuse is it so difficult to implement preventive policies? How can policy-makers justify public intervention into private life? And why does this interference often translate into contradictory or non-reflexive politics on lifestyles?

This erudite title discusses the social, cultural and policy consequences of these conditions as well as the effect of the primacy of agency and choice upon regulation.

Carefully analysing the impact of the rise of consumer society it deftly argues that the saturation of the modern ideals of progress, individualism and the democratic state has limited lifestyle regulation to stressing the self-responsibility of individuals within a free market.

The book critically examines:

Neo-liberal ideology and the free market

The sociology of modernity

The new consumer society

Citizenship in mass society

The power of autonomy

The interaction of regulation and agency

It provides a developed 'genealogical' account of the saturated society, enriched by original case-studies, and engaging with a broad range of traditional approaches and sources - including the work of Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, Adam Smith and Pierre Bourdieu.

This well researched and thought-provoking work will be of interest to students of social policy and sociology as well as policy-makers and field workers.

Contents:

1 Introduction: the Problem of Justification 1

2 Lifestyle and the Social Bond 15

3 The Good Order of Nature: Progress and Criticism in Adam Smith's Sociology of Modernity 35

4 Autonomy: the Contracting Individual 53

5 Intimacy: the Romantic Self 75

6 The New Consumer Society and Its Critics 99

7 The Welfare State in the Consumer Society 119

8 From Pastoral to Epistolary Power 141

9 Inner-Directed or Other-Directed Character? Agency and Citizenship in Mass Society 159

10 Re-inventing the Social Contract 179.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [191]-204) and index.

ISBN:

9780761959410

0761959416

OCLC:

277068888