Addictive Consumption: Capitalism, Modernity and Excess
Abstract
In this engaging new book, Gerda Reith explores key theoretical concepts in the sociology of consumption. Drawing on the ideas of Foucault, Marx and Bataille, amongst others, she investigates the ways that understandings of ‘the problems of consumption’ change over time, and asks what these changes can tell us about their wider social and political contexts. Through this, she uses ideas about both consumption and addiction to explore issues around identity and desire, excess and control and reason and disorder. She also assesses how our concept of ‘normal’ consumption has grown out of efforts to regulate behaviour historically considered as disruptive or deviant, and how in the contemporary world the ‘dark side’ of consumption has been medicalised in terms of addiction, pathology and irrationality. By drawing on case studies of drugs, food and gambling, the volume demonstrates the ways in which modern practices of consumption are rooted in historical processes and embedded in geopolitical structures of power. It not only asks how modern consumer culture came to be in the form it is today, but also questions what its various manifestations can tell us about wider issues in capitalist modernity. Addictive Consumption offers a compelling new perspective on the origins, development and problems of consumption in modern society. The volume’s interdisciplinary profile will appeal to scholars and students in sociology, psychology, history, philosophy and anthropology.
... We argue digital technologies have intensified the processes by which transnational corporations generate revenue and maximise their profits from alcohol and tobacco. Our key contention is that, when integrated as 'limbic platform capitalism', these three concepts allow us to theorise new ways in which the The purposive design, production and marketing of products that stimulate embodied, pleasurable affective responses to maximise profit has been called limbic capitalism (Courtwright 2005;Eyal 2014;Reith 2019). Courtwright (2019) has described how global corporations encourage heavy and habitual consumption of products that impact the limbic part of human brains, the centre responsible for pleasure and emotions. ...
... Courtwright (2019) has described how global corporations encourage heavy and habitual consumption of products that impact the limbic part of human brains, the centre responsible for pleasure and emotions. Theories of limbic capitalism argue that high and habitual use of legal but harmful commodities, such as alcohol and tobacco, is intentionally cultivated in order to drive profits, despite their negative impacts on health outcomes (Courtwright 2019;Reith 2019). ...
... Current research on the habituating forms of consumption associated with limbic capitalism usefully draws attention to limbic processes, but has tended to focus on biological, genetic or individual choice explanations (Eyal 2014;Courtwright 2019;Reith 2019). While acknowledging that many health-demoting commodities bring pleasure to consumers, limbic capitalism theorists tend to discount the extent to which these commodities are deeply embedded in the everyday lives, sociality and leisure practices of consumers (Courtwright 2019). ...
The purposive design, production and marketing of legal but health-demoting products that stimulate habitual consumption and pleasure for maximum profit has been called ‘limbic capitalism’. In this article, drawing on alcohol and tobacco as key examples, we extend this framework into the digital realm. We argue that ‘limbic platform capitalism’ is a serious threat to the health and wellbeing of individuals, communities and populations. Accessed routinely through everyday digital devices, social media platforms aggressively intensify limbic capitalism because they also work through embodied limbic processes. These platforms are designed to generate, analyse and apply vast amounts of personalised data in an effort to tune flows of online content to capture users’ time and attention, and influence their affects, moods, emotions and desires in order to increase profits. Social media are central to young people’s socialising, identities, leisure practices and engagement in civic life. Young people actively appropriate social media for their own ends but are simultaneously recruited as consumers who are specifically targeted by producers of limbic products and services. Social media platforms have seen large increases in users and traffic through the COVID-19 pandemic and limbic capitalism has worked to intensify marketing that is context, time and place specific, driving online purchases and deliveries of limbic products. This has public health implications that require immediate attention as existing regulatory frameworks are woefully inadequate in this era of data-driven, algorithmic marketing.
... Kemajuan pesat teknologi yang ditunggangi oleh ideologi pasar kapitalistik memunculkan berbagai fenomena di kalangan masyarakat modern (Reith, 2018). Salah satunya adalah perilaku konsumtif yang meningkat dengan semakin mudahnya transaksi jual beli. ...
... Nilai ini secara paradoks ditelan oleh industrialisasi yang membawa modernitas dan konsumerisme, namun juga sekaligus dibangkitkan kembali oleh kejenuhan akan dampak ikutan industrialisasi itu. Minimalisme tentu awalnya tidak kondusif bagi perkembangan industri yang menuntut masyarakat agar berbelanja dan mengkonsumsi produk semakin banyak (Reith, 2018). Namun, ketika masyarakat modern sudah mengalami fase industrialisasi yang mantap, minimalisme menjadi sesuatu yang kembali di damba. ...
... Beberapa melihat bahwa kehadiran minimalisme merupakan bagian dari kerinduan manusia modern terhadap gaya hidup yang tertanam dalam ketidaksadaran mereka (Reith, 2018). Mengingat bahwa manusia pra-industri telah hidup cukup lama dalam pola yang minimalis sedangkan konsumerisme itu sendiri jika dibandingkan hanyalah seumur jagung. ...
Materialist lifestyle produces consumptive behavior which ultimately has a broad impact on a person. The most dangerous impact is on mental health where individuals are more susceptible to depression when they do not feel they have enough. Responding to this condition, modern western society has created minimalist lifestyle. This lifestyle is characterized by a deliberate restriction of ownership of things. As for Islam, there is the concept of zuhud which means turning a Muslim away from all worldly things. Although by naked eye, minimalist behavior has similarities with zuhud, there are fundamental differences between the two. The purpose of this study was to identify the differences between minimalism and zuhud and their effect on mental health. Using the literature review method, this study reveals that zuhud guarantees a more stable and authentic mental health, especially for Muslims. The greater positive influence is caused by the reference point of the performer of zuhud in the hereafter rather than the world, and zuhud having an integrative-interconnective relationship with other rites in Islam. Keywords: islamic psychology, mental health, minimalism, zuhud
... 1). References to "demon drink" have been prevalent for centuries, and some of the earliest references to the "disease" of addiction may have begun with pastors, moralists, and physicians as early as the seventeenth century (Lemon, 2018;Reith, 2019;Warner, 1994). In other words, the so-called scientific progress of medical research on addiction has not made an entirely clean break with moral and theological approaches to addiction (Courtwright, 2010(Courtwright, , 2019Vrecko, 2010). ...
... When freedom is presumed to be synonymous with the ability of individuals to make profitable, self-interested market decisions, or merely the ability to make autonomous decisions at all, addiction can be quite easily construed as an individual pathology at odds with prevailing social norms. Addicts themselves can come to be seen as an embodiment of normative transgression that is often mapped onto social hierarchies of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nationality (Reith, 2004(Reith, , 2019. This can lead to a version of recovery that bears a considerable resemblance to normative views of success and selfhood under capitalism wherein successful recovery becomes synonymous with the ability to adjust oneself to the rigors of neoliberal capitalist life (Zigon, 2011). ...
... Healthcare, housing, food scarcity, wages, and the abolition of debt are here equally as important as offering pastoral care for individual addicts or opening up physical space for those recovery meetings. 11 There are legitimate critiques of AA and the multiple 12-step groups that it has inspired (Blevins 2009;Dodes and Dodes, 2014;Reith, 2019). However, I argue that AA, Narcotics Anonymous, and other groups remain valuable communal resources full of nuance, especially for those who do not have access to the professional, privatized care that remains prohibitively expensive. ...
Critical pastoral theology has no doubt come to recognize the significance of social formations in the crisis of addiction as a symptom of suffering. This article suggests that how we understand and describe these social formations matters. It argues that our most common approaches to addiction risk reproducing forms of domination via an incomplete notion of freedom in their attempt to clarify the exceptional status of addiction. This can function to obscure the capitalist nature of addiction and the addictive nature of capitalism undergirding our everyday lives. The author argues that addiction is itself a symptomatic expression of capitalist social formations; not merely an individual pathology, addiction names the way our social attachments to objects and to one another become compulsive despite their negative consequences. This critical concept of addiction allows us to see, name, and negate the false promises on which the endurance of capitalism depends. The ultimate aim of this critical approach is to consider how we as caregivers might reflect on and transform these dominating social divisions.
... Corporate influences operating through alcohol marketing mould individual decision-making on drinking, so that one is encouraged to express individuality as a consumer. At the same time one is encouraged to take responsibility for one's health, whilst paradoxically actually deciding to drink less is harder to implement in practice, with proconsumption social influences pushing in the opposite direction [35,36]. These contradictory pressures on the individual culminate in expectations about drinking, and indeed about behaviour and health more widely. ...
... The ideology of responsibility rests on judgements about autonomy and rationality, and in it, responsible consumption is evidence of the 'right' way to live…Indeed, it becomes the duty of sovereign consumers to furnish themselves with relevant knowledge and information and take appropriate steps to safeguard their health" [36] Conceptual work on brief interventions needs to encompass attention to how social influences can be understood, as they inescapably intrude upon conversations about alcohol. Indeed they shape how people think about alcohol, the associated risks and harms, as well as about the personal and societal responses needed. ...
... Such issues form part of emerging agendas on the commercial determinants of health [40]. The prevalence of alcohol consumption and other addictive behaviours is on the rise globally as weakly regulated corporate forces specifically seek to increase consumption in new populations, aided by ever more sophisticated digital possibilities for promotion [36]. Persuasion industries have grown quickly, using new technologies to offer hitherto remarkable means of accessing and influencing individual thinking and behaviour. ...
Background
There is no longer support for the idea that brief intervention programmes alone can contribute meaningfully to the improvement of population health relating to alcohol. As a result, calls for major innovations and paradigm shifts grow, notably among research leaders.
This paper briefly examines the history of the development of the evidence-base from the landmark World Health Organisation projects on Screening and Brief Intervention (SBI) in the 1980s onwards. Particular attention is given to weaknesses in the theorisation of social influence and interventions design, and declining effect sizes over time. Although the old SBI paradigm may be exhausted where it has been applied, it has not been replaced by a new paradigm. Alcohol marketing encourages heavy drinking and today may have more powerful effects on thinking about alcohol, and about alcohol problems, than previously. The nature of the societal challenge being faced in an alcogenic environment in which alcohol is widely promoted and weakly regulated underpins consideration of the possibilities for contemporary evidence-informed public health responses. Evidence-informed perspectives in discourses on alcohol problems need to be strengthened in redeveloping rationales for brief interventions. This process needs to move away from sole reliance on a model based on a two-person discussion of alcohol, which is divorced from wider concerns the person may have. Reimagining the nature of brief interventions involves incorporating digital content, emphasising meso-level social processes based on material that people want to share, and seeking synergies with macro-level population and media issues, including alcohol policy measures.
Conclusions
Current versions of brief interventions may be simply too weak to contend with the pressures of an alcogenic environment. A new generation of brief interventions could have a key role to play in developing multi-level responses to the problems caused by alcohol.
... Market violence refers to the harm or suffering inflicted by the logic of the market [21:1]. In neo-liberal capitalism, violence is employed for the realization of surplus value [20,58,59]. There is an ethical component here. ...
... Speedy advancements in technological innovations have meant that new configurations of electronic goods quickly become obsolete as marketing communications subliminally inform of the need to seek new versions [65,66] and more advanced applications [67]. While this may be economically justifiable in some cases, quite often it is just sheer overconsumption, addictive purchase or simply, hedonistic excesses [59]. As consumers buy new gadgets, the previously acquired devices are discarded. ...
... As matters stand, it no longer seems possible to deflect the main arguments about responsible production and consumption or the accompanying individual and collective responsibilities in managing waste. As markets rise, there also seems to be a fall in the quality of health [58,59] and a weakening of other determinants of health [86]. The policy interventions are few, inconsistent, and not sufficiently radical to fix the problem with urgency despite the scale. ...
The need for green business practices and green innovations underscores a growing recognition that climate change is now an existential threat not just to population health but also to the survival of businesses that are unable to embrace green practices with a sense of urgency. This paper contributes to the literature on market violence as an inhibitor of green innovations for sustainable waste management to curb the unneeded health effects of wastes in Africa. Our purpose is to problematize received wisdom, unquestioned assumptions, and incorrect diagnosis of the sources and health consequences of various forms of wastes in Africa. Much of the discourse on this issue remains ahistorical, and that risks leaving aside a vital question of exploitative extraction. By including this 'out-of-the-box' explanation through major case references, we are able to shed light on the critical issues that have hitherto received limited attention, thus enabling us to propose useful research questions for future enquiries. We propose a framework that delineates the structural composition of costs imposed by market violence that ranges from extraction to e-waste disposal. We advocate for the engineering of policies that create conditions for doing more with less resources, eliminating waste, and recycling as crucial steps in creating sustainable waste management innovations. Additionally, we highlight a set of fundamental issues regarding enablers and inhibitors of sustainable innovations and policies for waste management worth considering for future research. These include programmed obsolescence, irresponsible extraction, production, and consumption, all seen through the theoretical lens of market violence.
... Pro-consumption social influences and the moralization of individual drinking make talking about alcohol challenging within contemporary health care systems that pay little attention to the social contexts of individual decision-making [1,2]. Attempts to embed alcohol screening and brief interventions in health systems have been met with concerns from health care professionals about role adequacy, role legitimacy and role support [3][4][5][6]. ...
... Of the more established GP practice cohort: three (X3, X6, X9) said they rarely or never raised alcohol in their medication reviews; five (X2, X4, X5, X7, X10) said they raised it sometimes, if they thought it relevant, or if it was flagged on the records; and two (X1, X8) said that it was on templates they had designed themselves and was therefore always or mostly raised (X1, X8). Six of the newly recruited CPs reported asking about alcohol in medicines reviews in response to alerts for missing information, or as part of completing a template series of healthy living questions at the end of a review (1,3,4,5,7,9). One mostly doing care home SMRs with older people, said it was raised but rarely discussed (4). ...
Background:
Attempts to routinely embed brief interventions in health systems have long been challenging, with healthcare professionals concerned about role adequacy, legitimacy, and support. This is the first study to explore clinical pharmacists' experiences of discussing alcohol with patients in their new role in UK primary care, in developing a novel approach to brief intervention. It investigates their confidence with the subject of alcohol in routine practice and explores views on a new approach, integrating alcohol into the medication review as another drug directly linked to the patient's health conditions and medicines, rather than a separated 'healthy living' issue. The study forms part of wider efforts to repurpose and reimagine the potential application of brief interventions and to rework their contents.
Methods:
Longitudinal qualitative study of 10 recruits to the new clinical pharmacist role in English primary care, involving three semi-structured interviews over approximately 16 months, supplemented by 10 one-off interviews with pharmacists already established in general practice.
Results:
When raised at all, enquiring about alcohol in medication reviews was described in terms of calculating dose and level of consumption, leading to crude advice to reduce drinking. The idea was that those who appeared dependent should be referred to specialist services, though few such referrals were recalled. Pharmacists acknowledged that they were not currently considering alcohol as a drug in their practice and were interested in learning more about this concept and the approach it entailed, particularly in relation to polypharmacy. Some recognised a linked need to enhance consultation skills.
Conclusions:
Alcohol complicates routine clinical care and adversely impacts patient outcomes, even for those drinking at seemingly unremarkable levels. Changing clinical practice on alcohol requires engaging with, and supportively challenging, routine practices and entrenched ideas of different kinds. Framing alcohol as a drug may help shift the focus from patients with alcohol problems to problems caused for patients by alcohol. This is less stigmatising and provides role legitimacy for pharmacists to address alcohol clinically in medication reviews, thus providing one element in the formation of a new prevention paradigm. This approach invites further innovations tailored to other healthcare professional roles.
... This aspect is crucial for allowing young people to build a sports fans and/or athletes identity centered around the passion for sports, despite being highly exposed to sports betting advertisement. This view echoes qualitative works on gambling abstinence (Reith and Dobbie 2011Reith 2018). These studies emphasized that the maintenance gambling abstinence revolves around shifting from a gambling self-identity (i.e., a "gambling self", with many becoming unable to fulfill roles associated with their "non-addict selves"; Reith and Dobbie 2012) to a self-identity that is reshaped in harmonious and appropriate ways (e.g., through a renewed interest in activities in line with the individual's life values, which allows him/her to recover a sense of agency and meaning in life). ...
... This aspect is crucial for allowing young people to build a sports fans and/or athletes identity centered around the passion for sports, despite being highly exposed to sports betting advertisement. This view echoes qualitative works on gambling abstinence (Reith and Dobbie 2011Reith 2018), as well as recent theoretical accounts on addictive behaviors (Miller et al. 2020). These authors emphasize that the maintenance of gambling abstinence revolves around shifting from a gambling self-identity (i.e., a "gambling self", with many becoming unable to fulfill roles associated with their "non-addict selves"; Reith and Dobbie 2012) to a self-identity that is reshaped in harmonious and appropriate ways (e.g., through a renewed interest in activities in line with the individuals' life values, which allows them to recover a sense of agency and optimal engagement with the world; Reith and Dobbie 2012; Miller et al. 2020). ...
While the relationship between own health and subjective well-being is well documented, evidence is limited regarding the relationship of the latter with respect to the health of a family member. Recent models of human capital formation link human development to the stability of the home environment and to parental health. Using a unique longitudinal data from four developing countries, we extend this strand of the literature by investigating the role of family health on the well-being of adolescents. Our results show that family illness negatively affects subjective well-being. This effect is stronger for health problems of siblings than parents. We explore potential mechanisms and find that the most significant transmission channel for parental health is the shared social environment. The effect of the illness of siblings appears to be mostly driven by psychological factors.
... This aspect is crucial for allowing young people to build a sports fans and/or athletes identity centered around the passion for sports, despite being highly exposed to sports betting advertisement. This view echoes qualitative works on gambling abstinence (Reith and Dobbie 2011Reith 2018). These studies emphasized that the maintenance gambling abstinence revolves around shifting from a gambling self-identity (i.e., a "gambling self", with many becoming unable to fulfill roles associated with their "non-addict selves"; Reith and Dobbie 2012) to a self-identity that is reshaped in harmonious and appropriate ways (e.g., through a renewed interest in activities in line with the individual's life values, which allows him/her to recover a sense of agency and meaning in life). ...
... This aspect is crucial for allowing young people to build a sports fans and/or athletes identity centered around the passion for sports, despite being highly exposed to sports betting advertisement. This view echoes qualitative works on gambling abstinence (Reith and Dobbie 2011Reith 2018), as well as recent theoretical accounts on addictive behaviors (Miller et al. 2020). These authors emphasize that the maintenance of gambling abstinence revolves around shifting from a gambling self-identity (i.e., a "gambling self", with many becoming unable to fulfill roles associated with their "non-addict selves"; Reith and Dobbie 2012) to a self-identity that is reshaped in harmonious and appropriate ways (e.g., through a renewed interest in activities in line with the individuals' life values, which allows them to recover a sense of agency and optimal engagement with the world; Reith and Dobbie 2012; Miller et al. 2020). ...
School burnout is a new and emerging trend that presents a risk for student learning, successful educational and occupational transitions, and overall well-being. School engagement, on the other hand, leads to positive outcomes. This paper reviews recent research conducted in Finland examining school burnout and engagement during the major educational transitions from elementary school to further educational tracks, and from high school and beyond. Of special interest are the different pathways and profiles of school burnout, and the role of various personal and contextual antecedents in both burnout and engagement The studies reviewed here show that, during these major educational transitions, the school-burnout continuum is often associated with indicators of ill-being (e.g., depressive symptoms), and negatively associated with wellbeing (e.g., life satisfaction). The conclusion drawn from the evidence is that school burnout may be detrimental to the development of adolescents in multiple ways, and it could impair their future career development.
... Gamble-play involves a negotiation of user agency and industry calculation, where audience interests in enjoyment meet industry interests in profit, and where emphasis shifts to compulsive interaction and consumption. These encouragements to consume invite the pursuit of selffulfillment but are met with increased pressure to exercise restraint in environments tinged by features of gambling and finance that seek to foster the opposite effect (Reith, 2018). ...
... Nicoll (2019) describes gambling as a ritual of products and services wherein chance is inadvertently or deliberately a mechanism through which wealth is redistributed. These tensions, and gambling overall, represent a dematerialization of consumption wherein gambling exists for the circulation of money, with Reith (2018) asserting that this circulation exemplifies a logic of modern capitalist societies wherein public and private lives converge in a system of 24/7 capitalism (Fisher, 2009;Raymen and Smith, 2020a) and where opportunities to take part in gambling or gamble-play engagements exist in the interruptions in daily life. These ludic economies represent an ambiguous form of capitalism where disarming, game-like characteristics exist in increasingly complex environments (Giddings and Harvey, 2018). ...
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) exist today as a component of a broader, ever-evolving financial environment in which questions of value, ownership, and intention are characterized by their ambiguity. This article considers Dapper Labs “NBA Top Shot,” a blockchain-backed website inviting NBA fans to join in “a new era in fandom” wherein they may acquire NFTs of NBA highlights by opening “packs,” which are functionally similar to trading cards. NFTs reflect the pressures of market forces, as well as increased cultural and economic emphasis on marketization, financialization, commodification, and the ubiquity of gambling-like designs and interactions. Furthermore, this study explores tensions present in differing intentions for the NBA Top Shot platform and Discord server, the diffuse nature of user conversations (a nature that disregards topical boundaries), and audience attention toward marketization and investment interests. The commodification of the NBA fan experience illustrates a shared social pressure to more readily think of one’s life, interactions, and consumptive behaviors through the lens of the investor, fostering financial attitudes that normalize instability and encourage risk-taking beyond the scope of a platform where purchase-dependent interactions serve as a source of joy and social experience in a venue representing a perceived electronic gold rush.
... In many definitions, both legal and academic, the terms 'random' and 'chance' have been used in place of, or in addition to, uncertain(ty); however, these terms have stimulated discussion as to the precise nature of chance (Williams et al., 2017). One of the most prominent points of discussion relates to the degree to which chance influences the outcome, that is, whether an event must be wholly or predominantly determined by chance rather than skill Reith, 2018;Stevens and Young, 2010). The proliferation of algorithms which are employed in online and digital gambling activities further questions the notion of randomness and chance. ...
... These effects are further compounded by the fact that gamblified services or products may not always be obvious to users, or that they can be present in unanticipated locations. As such, there are concerns that gambling and gambling-like behaviours, that is, the preference for riskbased interactions, become normalised at an early stage, leading to increased likelihood of developing problematic consumption patterns (Abarbanel, 2018;Reith, 2018). This perspective results from the fact that exposure to gambling at an early age has been found to be a strong predictor of experiencing disordered or problematic gambling in later life (e.g. ...
In recent years, gambling has become increasingly prominent in everyday life; the term ‘gamblification’ first emerged in the late 2000s and was used to describe the colonisation of sports and sporting cultures by the gambling industry. Since that time, gamblification has been used to describe a range of phenomena in increasingly diffuse contexts; it has been variously used as a proxy for the convergence of gaming and gambling, to describe specific monetisation practices, or as a means of motivating consumer behaviours. Conceptual clarity has been further muddied by the positioning of gamblification as a form of gamification. This work provides a definition of gamblification, which draws upon and consolidates existing uses of the term while also providing a lens through which the differing aspects of gamblification can be understood and appraised. By doing so, this work will establish a clear conceptual framework, which can structure in-depth discussions of this multi-dimensional phenomenon.
... These include claims about the supposed economic contribution of the gambling industry in terms of the creation of jobs and tax contribution. They are entwined with appeals to the idea of national wealth and counterposed with the idea of its loss to foreign competition: a trope that has a long historical lineage in attempts to justify protectionist economic policies [92]. Here, industry actors argue that the current "positive" contribution to the "UK PLC", that is, the UK economy, must be maintained and that tax revenue is not lost to foreign entities. ...
... Industry-based narratives that claim the "enjoyment" of millions of gamblers are threatened by onerous regulatory change seeking to downplay the number of people harmed by gambling and focusing on ideas about recreation, leisure and choice of the "responsible majority" instead [94]. This kind of framing is located within wider neoliberal tropes of consumer sovereignty and a rejection of what is framed as "paternalistic" state interference [92,95]. It is also employed by other UCIs, who claim that the freedom to choose is sacrosanct and that choice should not be constrained by the state-typically referred to in these kinds of narratives as the "nanny state"-even in the pursuit of health protection [21,96]. ...
Commercial gambling is increasingly viewed as being part of the unhealthy commodities industries, in which products contribute to preventable ill-health globally. Britain has one of the world’s most liberal gambling markets, meaning that the regulatory changes there have implications for developments elsewhere. A review of the British Gambling Act 2005 is underway. This has generated a range of actions by the industry, including mobilising arguments around the threat of the “black market”. We critically explore industry’s framing of these issues as part of their strategy to resist regulatory change during the Gambling Act review. We used a predefined review protocol to explore industry narratives about the “black market” in media reports published between 8 December 2020 and 26 May 2021. Fifty-five articles were identified and reviewed, and themes were narratively synthesised to examine industry framing of the “black market”. The black market was framed in terms of economic threat and loss, and a direct connection was made between its growth and increased regulation. The articles mainly presented gambling industry perspectives uncritically, citing industry-generated evidence (n = 40). Industry narratives around the “black market” speak to economically and emotionally salient concerns: fear, safety, consumer freedom and economic growth. This dominant framing in political, mainstream and industry media may influence political and public opinion to support the current status quo: “protecting” the existing regulated market rather than “protecting” people. Debates should be reframed to consider all policy options, especially those designed to protect public health.
... While the case of DFS illustrates how continually shifting definitions of games versus gambling selectively impact regulation efforts in New York State, the case of Pokémon Go illustrates an even muddier divide that complicates regulation: that between production and consumption. The moral impetus and rationale for regulating gambling is commonly rooted in discourses of consumption and potential losses of wages and productivity (Reith, 2018). While gambling scholars and regulators foreground discussions of consumption, the contribution of this article is to illustrate how online networked digital media are rooted in overlapping notions of productivity (e.g., social, economic, biophysical, and analytic) that ultimately destabilize regulatory pushes that only consider the consumption side of the equation. ...
... As Reith (2018) argues, consumption and addiction name powerful, and profoundly connected, narratives of modernity. Their interrelation has historically framed (and continues to frame) wide-ranging regulatory concerns. ...
Regulatory approaches to games are organized by boundaries between game/not-game, game/gambling game, skilled/unskilled play, consumption/production. Perhaps more importantly, moral justifications for regulating gambling (and condemning digital games) are rooted in the idea that they consume our time and wages but give little in return. This article uses two case studies to show how these boundaries and justifications are now perforated and reconfigured by digital mediation. The case study of Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) illustrates a contemporary challenge to rigid dichotomies between game/not game, skilled/unskilled play, and game/gambling game, demonstrating how regulation becomes deterritorialized as gambling moves out of state-regulated physical casinos and takes the form of networked, digital games. Our second case study of Pokémon Go approaches regulation from a different direction, complicating the rigid dichotomy between production/consumption in online networked play. We show how play is increasingly realized as productive in economic, social, physical, subjective and analytic registers, while at the same time, it is driven by gambling design imperatives, such as extending time-on-device. Pokémon Go exemplifies analytic productivity, a term we use to refer to the production of data flows that can be leveraged for a wide variety of purposes, including to predict, shape, and channel the behaviour of player populations, thereby generating multiple streams of revenue. Ultimately, both cases illustrate how digital games and gambling increasingly blur into each other, complicating the regulatory landscape.
... This aspect is crucial for allowing young people to build a sports fans and/or athletes identity centered around the passion for sports, despite being highly exposed to sports betting advertisement. This view echoes qualitative works on gambling abstinence (Reith and Dobbie 2011, 2012, 2013Reith 2018). These studies emphasized that the maintenance gambling abstinence revolves around shifting from a gambling self-identity (i.e., a "gambling self", with many becoming unable to fulfill roles associated with their "non-addict selves"; Reith and Dobbie 2012) to a self-identity that is reshaped in harmonious and appropriate ways (e.g., through a renewed interest in activities in line with the individual's life values, which allows him/her to recover a sense of agency and meaning in life). ...
... This aspect is crucial for allowing young people to build a sports fans and/or athletes identity centered around the passion for sports, despite being highly exposed to sports betting advertisement. This view echoes qualitative works on gambling abstinence (Reith and Dobbie 2011, 2012, 2013Reith 2018), as well as recent theoretical accounts on addictive behaviors (Miller et al. 2020). These authors emphasize that the maintenance of gambling abstinence revolves around shifting from a gambling self-identity (i.e., a "gambling self", with many becoming unable to fulfill roles associated with their "non-addict selves"; Reith and Dobbie 2012) to a self-identity that is reshaped in harmonious and appropriate ways (e.g., through a renewed interest in activities in line with the individuals' life values, which allows them to recover a sense of agency and optimal engagement with the world; Reith and Dobbie 2012;Miller et al. 2020). ...
Watching sport and attending a sport event are generally considered popular, enjoyable, and valorized activities in our society. The last few years have seen a development in digital technologies (i.e. smartphones, tablets, computers), which now offers the possibility to gamble on almost every sport events, at every moment, e.g. before or during a game in play. Moreover, the level of exposure to sports betting advertisements is unprecedented. Promoted by this around-the-clock availability and ubiquity of cues, sports betting and gambling is becoming increasingly popular, in particular in adolescents and young adults, with a growing concern that this population could develop unprecedent levels of gambling-related problems. Our objective here is to elaborate on how the increased popularity of sports betting is currently reframing the way sport is experienced by young fans and student-athletes. After describing current levels of sports betting involvement and related problems among young people, we will review the available evidence documenting the growing normalization and popularity of gambling in sports and its impact on cognitive and affective processes in children and adolescents, including young athletes. The last section focuses on regulation strategies addressing current concerns on the consequences of sports betting in children and adolescents.
... We dress it up as an evolutionary success, as a moment to champion, to somehow be proud of. But really, it set in motion a pathway that led to becoming the driver of an addiction to consumption that has systematically overtaken humanity [75] and fundamentally altered how much of humanity relates to Gaia [76]. ...
Climate change has been described as an existential crisis for humanity. Much has been studied and written about the biophysical and economic factors contributing to climate change, but very little on the psychology of its human-induced origins. In a self-reflective viewpoint influenced by working with Aboriginal people in Australia and connecting deeply with its landscape, this paper explores what connection with nature really means and why some of humanity lost it. It is argued that an alternative avenue for understanding humanity’s existential crisis is to see it as a trauma problem. At the beginning of the Holocene, several cultures around the world, at around the same time, switched to a food storage economy triggered by a rapid change in climate. Little research has explored the psychology of this change, with most focusing on it being an evolutionary success because of the civilised pathway it enabled. However, this paper suggests that it might also be seen as a traumatising process affecting generations of people for millennia and fundamentally altering many people’s relationship with the planet. It is proposed that understanding the psychological origins of the human drivers of climate change could enable collective healing of our relationship with the natural world and that this is necessary to realise planetary health.
... We have argued that this overall pattern of change in the development of microdosing practicestowards the use of substances to facilitate greater inter-and interpersonal expansivenessis consistent with a 'civilising' of psychedelics that is linked to longer-term processes involving shifting canons of selfhood and health (e.g. Elias, 2012bElias, , 2022Peterson & Lupton, 1996;Reith, 2018). ...
... « Our current framing of gambling is one of risk and reward, where wealth is accumulated by the victor » (Wardle, 2021, p. 22). Dans le contexte d'une marchandisation des loisirs (Hemingway, 1996), les JHA sont de plus en plus acceptés socialement, devenant un « passe-temps » légitime, et se positionnant comme industrie de masse (Reith, 2019). ...
Si de nombreux jeux vidéo sont vendus moyennant un certain montant, le modèle d’affaire des jeux gratuits ( free-to-play ) s’est rapidement imposé au cours de la dernière décennie. Or ce modèle, qui est basé sur la collecte de données personnelles, les microtransactions et le profilage publicitaire, implique des ventes d’items et un temps de connexion le plus étendu possible afin d’accroître les profits. Pour ce faire, différentes stratégies sont utilisées, dont des stratégies dites « persuasives » qui influencent les joueurs et joueuses à demeurer connectés, à dépenser et à revenir fréquemment sur le jeu gratuit. Parmi ces stratégies, les mécaniques de jeux de hasard et d’argent (JHA) sont reconnues pour leur force persuasive et leur pouvoir addictif. Elles sont pourtant de plus en plus présentes au sein des jeux mobiles pour les adultes, mais également ceux pour les enfants. Afin de documenter le phénomène, 249 jeux mobiles gratuits pour enfants ont été analysés pour évaluer la prévalence des mécaniques persuasives et de JHA, leurs formes d’actualisation et leurs types d’intégration dans l’expérience vidéoludique des enfants. Nos résultats démontrent une « gamblification » des jeux mobiles gratuits pour enfants et un conditionnement des comportements qui passe par une normalisation des mécaniques persuasives et de JHA auprès de ce jeune public. La convergence des jeux vidéo avec les JHA se confirme à nouveau avec une focalisation sur des jeux pour un très jeune public. L’article se conclut en prenant acte de ce sérieux enjeu de santé publique en lien avec le bien-être des enfants.
... Gambling itself violates these, but the primary harm is financial, which further contributes to stigmatization (Marko et al., 2023). Experiencing financial difficulties, in general, creates powerful feelings of shame, guilt, and personal responsibility (Sweet et al., 2018) and is stigmatized as it signals a deep personal failing in societies (Reith, 2018). ...
People with lived experience have drawn attention to gambling stigma as a harm in itself, justifying discrimination and exacerbating other harms. The gambling establishment’s response has reproduced individual responsibility by reducing stigma to a barrier to help-seeking. More recently, adapting to critiques of individual responsibility, the gambling establishment has expanded the issue to one of services and society. This paper identifies the structural dynamics that drive gambling stigma and discrimination from the perspective of lived experience. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with adults in Great Britain who had experienced gambling harm (n = 40). Several key themes were identified: (1) Harmless fun and individual responsibility; (2) Comparison with substance use; (3) The role of money; (4) Lack of parity in government policy; (5) Stereotypes of “typical” gamblers. The findings show the fundamental driver of stigma is the way commercial gambling functions and is enabled to function by the state, thus perpetuating the very conditions producing stigma in the first place. Stigma-reduction strategies that focus on changing individual behaviour or public information campaigns that tell people to get help early are insufficient: they are just another version of “responsible gambling,” where the individual is expected to do everything. Change requires addressing the unique features of gambling harm, stigma and discrimination, and the position the U.K. government allows commercial gambling to occupy.
... Social media uses subtle but persuasive forms of marketing of harmful commodities that are linked to habitual consumption. Evidence shows that young people and underage users' consumption patterns are influenced by social media marketing (Anderson et al., 2009;Carah and Angus, 2018;Carter, 2016;Cavazos-Rehg et al., 2014;Cheney-Lippold, 2011;Courtwright, 2019;Dyer, 2019;Esser and Jernigan, 2018;Jackler et al., 2019;Jernigan et al., 2017;Laestadius, Wahl and Cho, 2016;Lyons et al., 2019;McCreanor et al., 2013;Reith, 2018). In the wider online environment, research shows that exposure to harmful commodity marketing influences purchase and consumption behaviours (Backholer et al., 2021;Buchanan et al., 2018;Lobstein et al., 2017). ...
Although the creators of the world wide web never intended it to be regulated by state intervention, the rapid evolution of the online environment has necessitated regulation of certain aspects of the digital ecosystem. Harmful commodity marketing (e.g., alcohol, vaping and unhealthy food and beverage product marketing) on social media and in digital spaces has been linked to adverse health outcomes and there have been calls for its regulation. In this commentary we explain why this is important and consider how such regulation could be achieved.
... Brief interventions have sought to help people avoid or manage problems with alcohol, but that is harder to do now in the contexts of lifetime exposure to industry and other social influences, deepening inequalities and weakened capacity or willingness to manage unhealthy commodity industries [28]. It is perhaps unsurprising that the original ambitions for brief interventions have yet to be realised convincingly when prices are low, availability easy and norms encourage more drinking [29]. To progress, we need to recognise that, for many reasons, alcohol and the problems it causes may be challenging to identify and discuss with individuals. ...
Background
Alcohol problems are increasing across the world and becoming more complex. Limitations to international evidence and practice mean that the screening and brief intervention paradigm forged in the 1980s is no longer fit for the purpose of informing how conversations about alcohol should take place in healthcare and other services. A new paradigm for brief interventions has been called for.
Brief interventions 2.0
We must start with a re-appraisal of the roles of alcohol in society now and the damage it does to individual and population health. Industry marketing and older unresolved ideas about alcohol continue to impede honest and thoughtful conversations and perpetuate stigma, stereotypes, and outright fictions. This makes it harder to think about and talk about how alcohol affects health, well-being, and other aspects of life, and how we as a society should respond. To progress, brief interventions should not be restricted only to the self-regulation of one’s own drinking. Content can be orientated to the properties of the drug itself and the overlooked problems it causes, the policy issues and the politics of a powerful globalised industry. This entails challenging and reframing stigmatising notions of alcohol problems, and incorporating wider alcohol policy measures and issues that are relevant to how people think about their own and others' drinking. We draw on recent empirical work to examine the implications of this agenda for practitioners and for changing the public conversation on alcohol.
Conclusion
Against a backdrop of continued financial pressures on health service delivery, this analysis provokes debate and invites new thinking on alcohol. We suggest that the case for advancing brief interventions version 2.0 is both compelling and urgent.
... Their expansion into SSA has drawn comparisons to the strategy of the tobacco industry when it became subject to more stringent forms of control and shifted its attention to Africa, China and South America . This movement can be seen as a form of neo-colonisation: the drive that David Harvey (2006) spoke of when he described the tendency of capitalism to seek out new sources of profit through geographical expansion (Reith 2018). ...
Recent decades have seen gambling become a highly lucrative industry across sub-Saharan Africa. Fuelled by the democratisation of access to digital finance and internet technologies, this gambling boom has been concentrated in Africa�s urban economies, where expanding youth populations are increasingly connected to global circuits of sport, popular culture and speculative forms of consumption. This has engendered growing interest in gambling as a distinct and emerging field of academic enquiry across sub-Saharan Africa. To date, psychiatric, epidemiological and behavioural sciences have provided the dominant frame for measuring the extent of �problem gambling� and addiction, but there remains the need to expand and diversify the field to encompass more critical and interdisciplinary approaches that recognise gambling as a densely significant social and cultural phenomenon. This article aims to provide a point of departure for a critical research agenda on the differentiated impacts of gambling on young people and their communities across the continent.
... With the normalisation of gambling, the "pathological gambler" was created as a label to define people experiencing harm from gambling as distinct from 'normal' gamblers, whose consumptive production is beneficial for the economy. Reith (2018) argues that the socioeconomic trends of neoliberalism co-create the conditions for gambling deregulation and for the development of a self-regulating responsible gambler. The elements of "pathological" gambling, lack of control and reason, also condemn the subject as failing at the neo-liberal values of free market choice and appropriate, controlled consumption (Reith, 2013, p. 727). ...
... That is, how ongoing gambling practices are reproduced through knowledge held by the gambling industry of what makes gamblers happy. Previous research has pointed to the importance of the discourses circulated within gambling marketing campaigns (Reith, 2018) alongside the research into technologies and material design to demarcate, designate, and optimise return to and expenditure within commercial gambling spaces (Dixon et al., 2006;Kingma, 2008;Griffiths, 2010;Hing and Haw, 2010;Nicoll, 2011;Schull, 2012;Gainsbury et al., 2016;Fransson et al., 2018;Lopez-Gonzalez et al., 2018.) Yet, missing in this literature is an understanding of why certain bodies plug into these atmospheres which stimulate bodies, and not others. ...
This paper reviews the progress of geographical research on the gambling industry and presents a framework to comprehend the role of space in gambling consumption and harm. It covers two themes: the casino’s place in urban governance and the agency of gamblers, and how space impacts gambling consumption and harm. The paper introduces a conceptual framework of orientation, affective atmosphere, and intimacy to better comprehend how gambling practices can increase or decrease risk. Finally, the paper suggests that this framework can help to better understand online sports gambling consumption and harm in the context of market growth.
... However, industrialized civilization has since moved beyond the point of rational optimism. Rather than mastering Nature, our tools have arguably mastered us [12,27], have undermined our agency to change them [28,29], and may now require an intervention to curb our "addiction" to production and consumption [30,31]. Against the disheartening prospects of this diagnosis and its hopelessness, the Menominee people's indigenous stewardship as "new wine in old bottles" demonstrates one possible way out of our current dilemma. ...
Acknowledging an undeniable need for innovation, this paper offers a qualitative assessment for recognition and policy advocacy for superior innovations-for new wood products and processes offering more benefits and fewer drawbacks than other innovations. The paper highlights the irrationality of using the limited natural and human-made goods of the world to produce and consume inferior innovations, especially when they fail to mitigate or, in fact, contribute to worsening climate change. Raymond Williams' "structures of feeling" are used to disclose evaluative commitments associated with the "new" characteristic of industrialized and indigenous civilizations toward illuminating potential pathways for halting an otherwise seemingly unstoppable engine of climate change from pushing all of life on Earth over its precipice. Discussing how the "new" is always implicated in the "old," decision-making and design methods applicable over the whole of the value chain are proposed for generating "new" innovations and processes that are genuinely able to change the current world trajectory of our species. Future research is also discussed.
... This happens especially when consumers (and patients for our purpose) are extremely vulnerable [48,49], thereby paving the way for exploitation through deceit and fake products. While such situations are bad enough in sectors such as short-term lending and banking at high-interest rates [49,50], deceptive and predatory advertising leads to addictive consumption of health-ruining products [51]. It is worse when it comes to the area of direct and active consumption of pharmaceuticals for important health needs [52]. ...
Purpose: This multidisciplinary study seeks to determine the nature and structure of the informal markets for counterfeit medicines, the co-factors underpinning the demand and supply of counterfeit Western allopathic medicines (WAM), traditional and alternative medicines (TAM), and potential institutional responses in Ghana.
Method: This study is based on an interpretive research approach. It deploys a synthesis of a longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork, with multiple repeated visits for observations, analysis of documents, interviews, and focus group discussions.
Findings: The study identifies five major inter-related discoveries that point to the need for urgent institutional responses: Approaches to global health governance pay little attention to the complex economic gamut of TAM, including herbal medicines. The rise in necessity entrepreneurship and the availability of easy-to-use packaging and advertising technologies have made TAM a major competitor of WAM. The informal markets for WAM and TAM are structured in ways that allow them to evade formalized interventions and regulations. Standardization allows destructive entrepreneurs to derive advantage from economies of scale and reduce production costs, allowing the sector to flourish with little economic risk while inflicting violence on consumers. Personalization and co-creation of medicine with consumers has the added psychological effect of increasing consumer confidence. This, however, enlists consumers in the market violence against themselves.
Social implications: Destructive entrepreneurship, whether inadvertent or criminal creates benefits for groups and individuals but negatively affects public health on various levels.
Originality: Mitigation and interventions that ignore the informal TAM market of destructive entrepreneurship only answer a part of the big question of how to guarantee patient/consumer safety from the threats of all counterfeits.
... In the majority of the world, it is now possible to access casinos, sports books, lotteries, e-gaming and online slots via smartphone technologies that enable rapid forms of real-time play around the clock. 1 This unprecedented expansion and diversification of commercial gambling markets has, however, engendered public health concerns, with many academics, politicians and policymakers cautioning against the detrimental consequences associated with gambling harms. 2,3 As public debate and scrutiny over the regulation of the gambling industry in the 'Global North' has increased, researchers have also raised concerns about industry expansion into new markets in the 'Global South', and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in particular, noting the similarities between these trends with those of the tobacco industry when faced with tobacco control. ...
Objectives
Commercial gambling markets have undergone unprecedented expansion and diversification in territories across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This gambling boom has popularised the uptake of gambling products in existing circuits of popular culture, sport and leisure and raised concerns about the extent to which state legislation is equipped to regulate the differentiated impacts of gambling on public health.
Study design
Comparative policy analysis.
Methods
This article provides a systematic mapping of the regulatory environment pertaining to gambling across SSA. The review was conducted by obtaining and triangulating data from a desk review of online materials, consultation with regulatory bodies in each territory and the VIXIO Gambling Compliance database.
Results
Gambling is legally regulated in 41 of 49 (83.6%) SSA countries, prohibited in 7 (14.3%) and is not legislated for in 1 (2.0%). Of those countries that regulate gambling, 25 (61.0%) countries had dedicated regulators and 16 (39.0%) countries regulated via a government department. Only 2 of 41 (4.9%) countries have published annual reports continuously since the formation of regulatory bodies, and 3 (7.3%) countries have published an incomplete series of reports since the formation. In 36 (87.8%) countries, no reports were published. Enforcement activities were documented by all five regulators that published reports.
Conclusion
The review uncovered a lack of coherence in regulatory measures and the need for more transparent public reporting across SSA territories. There are also variations in regulating online products and marketing, with most countries lacking apt guidelines for the digital age. Our findings suggest an urgent need to address the regulatory void surrounding online forms of gambling and the promotion of gambling products. This underlines the importance of a public health approach to protect against an increase in gambling-related harms.
... (p. 143) Some sexual robotics and related AI-enhanced sex initiatives (such as chatbots) are part of technological approaches that are rooted in capitalizing on individuals' addictions (Eyal, 2014;Reith, 2018), where users cannot identify their limits and extricate themselves from unhealthy or dysfunctional use situations. Addiction has long been a factor in the societal issues involving the pornography industry, which fostered the excessive consumption on the part of a relatively small fraction of the population, with lesser consumption levels from other population sectors (Voss, 2015). ...
Robots, artificial intelligence, and autonomous vehicles are associated with substantial narrative and image-related legacies that often place them in a negative light. This chapter outlines the basics of the “dramaturgical” and technosocial approaches that are used throughout this book to gain insights about how these emerging technologies are affecting deeply-seated social and psychological processes. The robot as an “other” in the workplace and community—an object of attention and discussion– has been a frequently-utilized theme of science fiction as well as a topic for research analysis, with many people “acting out” their anxieties and grievances. Human-AI contests and displays of robotic feats are often used to intimidate people and reinforce that individuals are not in control of their own destinies, which presents unsettling prospects for the future.
... Allerdings stellte sich das damit geschaffene Glücksspielsubjekt als ausgesprochen »kapriziös« dar und wurde mehrfach reklassifiziert: von »zwanghaft« über »pathologisch« hin zu »gestört« (vgl. Reith 2019). Überdies ist die Krankheitsdefinition »Glücksspielsucht« keine rein medizinische. ...
... Alcohol industry bodies emphasise 'responsible drinking' of their products, focusing on the individual user and deflecting attention from their own roles in the production of the harms [11,12]. This is similar to how the tobacco and gambling industries emphasise the rights and responsibilities of consumers using their products [13,14]. This deflecting construction is also found in widespread injunctions from policymakers on 'responsible drinking' [5]. ...
Background
Alcohol is challenging to discuss, and patients may be reluctant to disclose drinking partly because of concern about being judged. This report presents an overview of the development of a medications review intervention co-produced with the pharmacy profession and with patients, which breaks new ground by seeking to give appropriate attention to alcohol within these consultations.
Methods
This intervention was developed in a series of stages and refined through conceptual discussion, literature review, observational and interview studies, and consultations with advisory groups. In this study we reflect on this process, paying particular attention to the methods used, where lessons may inform innovations in other complex clinical consultations.
Results
Early work with patients and pharmacists infused the entire process with a heightened sense of the complexity of consultations in everyday practice, prompting careful deliberation on the implications for intervention development. This required the research team to be highly responsive to both co-production inputs and data gathered in formally conducted studies, and to be committed to working through the implications for intervention design. The intervention thus evolved significantly over time, with the greatest transformations resulting from patient and pharmacist co-design workshops in the second stage of the process, where pharmacists elaborated on the nature of the need for training in particular. The original research plans provided a helpful structure, and unanticipated issues for investigation emerged throughout the process. This underscored the need to engage dynamically with changing contexts and contents and to avoid rigid adherence to any early prescribed plan.
Conclusions
Alcohol interventions are complex and require careful developmental research. This can be a messy enterprise, which can nonetheless shed new insights into the challenges involved in optimising interventions, and how to meet them, if embraced with an attitude of openness to learning. We found that exposing our own research plans to scrutiny resulted in changes to the intervention design that gained the confidence of different stakeholders. Our understanding of the methods used, and their consequences, may be bounded by the person-centred nature of this particular intervention.
... 74 The UK government's latest obesity strategy noted that food choices are 'shaped and influenced through advertising in its many forms'. 75 It is important that sponsorship should not be separated from advertising in considering regulation which helps to protect football fans (including many children and young people) from the marketing of HFSS food beverages and alcohol. Public health academics 76 and organizations such as the European Healthy Stadia Network 77 are raising concerns about unhealthy sport sponsorship. ...
Background:
Establishing the English Premier League has resulted in a dramatic rise in commercial activities, raising public health concerns around unhealthy brand marketing.
Methods:
Three linked case studies analysed the marketing techniques of three of the Premier League’s partners in the 2019/20 season: Coca-Cola, Budweiser, and Cadbury. Data from Twitter were triangulated with promotional materials, product promotions in supermarkets and grey literature. An inductive thematic analysis explored the strategies used to engage fans.
Results:
The studies show sponsors purchasing access to fans and inserting their brands into the emotional and passionate environment of EPL football. Sponsors evoke cultural traditions to align with and engage fans, to encourage consumption. Consumption is ‘responsibilised’ and positioned as an individual choice.
Conclusions:
The marketing techniques identified exploit social and cultural dimensions of EPL football to increase consumption of unhealthy brands, with the potential to negatively impact on the health of the EPL’s audience.
... Participants in this study also spoke in these terms at times, both in relation to themselves and to others. We urge caution in taking this route, and instead encourage a more holistic view that sets gambling and the bettor within their social and economic contexts (Reith, 2018;Shaffer & Korn, 2002). Such an approach should also take into consideration the commercial determinants of health (Kickbusch, Allen, & Franz, 2016) to appreciate that the contexts in which our participants are betting has been shaped by corporate interests that seek to subjugate them as consumers in ways that extract their wealth. ...
The gambling industry in Malawi has grown rapidly over the last 5 years. Fuelled by mobile technologies and roadside kiosks, sports betting has become particularly visible. A leading company has positioned its products as a means for Malawians to generate an income and frame sports betting as a skill. In this chapter we present findings from interviews with 10 young men in Lilongwe, Malawi, who bet on sports and explore how the company leverages interest in football to engage these men in other forms of gambling. The results reveal aspects of how Malawian men respond to the strategies used by the betting provider to grow its market.
... A further necessary social condition for addictions is a -more or less -prevailing oversupply. Gerda Reith describes this connection between the structure of consumer capitalism and the collective excesses of drugs, food and gambling [42]. Economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton analyze the socio-economic roots of the declining life expectancy of the white underclass in the late-capitalistic United States. ...
... Crucially, many of these novel sensations can quickly become preferences because they indicate that human life will be less strenuous and more stimulating. Furthermore, they can soon become addictive [9]. By contrast, unwanted surprise from these novel sensations may become apparent decades later. ...
Unlike ecosystem engineering by other living things, which brings a relatively limited range of sensations that are connected to a few enduring survival preferences, human ecosystem engineering brings an increasing variety and frequency of novel sensations. Many of these novel sensations can quickly become preferences as they indicate that human life will be less strenuous and more stimulating. Furthermore, they can soon become addictive. By contrast, unwanted surprise from these novel sensations may become apparent decades later. This recognition can come after the survival of millions of humans and other species has been undermined. In this paper, it is explained that, while multiscale free energy provides a useful hypothesis for framing human ecosystem engineering, disconnects between preferences and survival from human ecosystem engineering limit the application of current assumptions that underlie continuous state-space and discrete state-space modelling of active inference.
... We begin by building our analytic apparatus by combining political economic approaches (Arsenault, 2011;Flew, 2012), platform studies (Nieborg and Poell, 2018;Srnicek, 2017;van Dijck et al., 2018), and sociocultural critique (Reith, 2019;Schüll, 2012). Our argument is that platforms like Steam are a different space of consumption than what has traditionally been analyzed in terms of gambling or gaming and that they are constantly evolving to encapsulate consumers' activities in order to extract the maximum amount of value in the form of participation on platform (POP), a distinct variation of TOD. ...
The rise of platforms as the premier model of videogame distribution has led to a number of changes in the business models of producers and distributors. Consumers are constantly hailed by games platforms through freemium business models that offer cosmetic items contained in loot boxes or recurring subscriptions. Thus far, game studies and consumer studies have been unable to account for the totality of how these new and dynamic platforms circumvent legal barriers and attract potential consumers. This paper argues that a hybrid research model combining platform studies, socio-cultural critique of gamblification, and political economy is required in order to theorize and explicate how these platforms operate. The platformized and gamblified model for game distribution seeks to regulate and configure networks of association between consumers and producers with the ultimate aim of eliciting participation on platforms.
... King & Delfabbro, 2019;Li, Mills, & Nower, 2019;Brooks & Clark, 2019;Griffiths, 2018;Zendle & Cairns, 2018) and policymakers increasingly question whether loot boxes and skin betting are a form of gambling or what impact, if any, these new technologies have on vulnerable audiences (UK Parliament, 2018). As such, this is a critical moment to consider more closely contemporary patterns of digital consumption and where elements of "gambling" and "gaming" elide Reith, 2018). ...
The consumption of digital games has become increasingly ‘gamblified’ (Gainsbury et al., 2015; Zanescu et al., 2020) in recent years. Due to the changes in media landscape such as the development of new forms of gambling via the Internet and mobile phones, consumers can now play games and gamble in real time and from almost any location (King et al., 2020). The growing intersections between digital games, gambling and consumption practices afforded by these technological changes take many forms (Albarrán-Torres, 2018). Some players pursue what has become known as ‘skin betting’, which involves wagering digital ‘skins’ (virtual appearances) of characters either within games or on third-party websites and platforms (Greer et al., 2019); others bet on esports (competitive digital gaming) competitions in a manner comparable to traditional sports betting (Gainsbury et al., 2017); others utilise ‘gamblified’ monetisation methods when watching and engaging with live-streamed digital game content on platforms such as Twitch.tv (Johnson and Brock, 2020), while others still purchase loot boxes, the focus of many of the studies in this particular issue, which involve paying real-world money for an unpredictable set of in-game virtual items (Macey and Hamari, 2019; Nielsen and Grabarczyk, 2019). This list is, however, difficult to make comprehensive or exhaustive due to the rapid speed with which innovations and techniques in this domain are developing (Johnson and Brock, 2020). Nevertheless, the very speed of these developments shows us what a dynamic and rapidly evolving field of consumption the gaming-gambling intersection represents, and that a wide range of platforms, users and practices are becoming entangled in new extraordinary ways.
... Over the last two decades, real-money gambling has moved increasingly away from its association with "sin" and "social deviance" and has become normalized as being one among many consumption and leisure options (Raymen and Smith, 2017;Young, 2010). Historically, gambling has been seen as an affront to norms of thrift and financial balance, a type of wasteful spending that could only lead to financial ruin (Reith, 2018). Changing contexts in terms of how and where gambling takes place has decisively shifted this point of view, leading to an increased acceptance of gambling and gambling-like products. ...
Social casino apps are an emergent genre in the app economy that sits at the intersection of three different industries: casino gambling, freemium mobile games, and social media platforms. This institutional position has implications for the social casino app's political economy and culture of consumption. We argue that social casino apps are representative of a broader casualization of risk that has taken hold in a platform society. By combining the uncertainty and chance associated with gambling with the interruptibility, informality, and modularity of free-to-play mobile games, social casino apps offer complete contingency in how they are designed and played. Game progression and social networking features are used to normalize the relationship between the consumer of social casino apps and the contingency of their desired form of play. As a result, the experience of risk is no longer restricted to the casino floor and in fact becomes a part of one's daily routine. This casualization of risk marks the next adaptation of the contingent cultural commodity, where nothing is guaranteed and everything is subject to chance.
... King & Delfabbro, 2019;Li, Mills, & Nower, 2019;Brooks & Clark, 2019;Griffiths, 2018;Zendle & Cairns, 2018) and policymakers increasingly question whether loot boxes and skin betting are a form of gambling or what impact, if any, these new technologies have on vulnerable audiences (UK Parliament, 2018). As such, this is a critical moment to consider more closely contemporary patterns of digital consumption and where elements of "gambling" and "gaming" elide Reith, 2018). ...
This article examines how ‘gambling’ secured a central economic and cultural position in the development of modern digital games. We first trace how developers have monetized ‘games’ and ‘play’, from slot machines to PC, console and mobile platforms, before considering the recent controversy over ‘loot boxes’ as an emblematic case study of the ongoing gamblification of digital play. We argue that (1) the rising costs of development and marketing for ‘blockbuster’ games, (2) an overcrowded marketplace and (3) significant shifts in the corporate culture of the games industry are creating cultural conditions which legitimize gambling as a form of digital game production and consumption. This is evidenced in developers’ capacity to innovate around legal challenges and player demand for further customization and rewards. What emerges is a question about the future direction of game development and the impact of a logic of money, rather than play, which now underwrites it.
Children’s sugar consumption has been marked out as an important area of public health policymaking in the UK, due to connections between sugar consumption, obesity, type 2 diabetes and dental decay. Yet unlike other regulated substances (alcohol, tobacco, e-cigarettes), ‘moderate’ or ‘responsible’ sugar consumption, rather than abstinence, is the desired policy outcome. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Edinburgh in 2018–19 in two demographically mixed Scottish state primary schools, I examine how school staff navigate this space of lenience written into state health policy—whereby some sugar can be consumed, sometimes. The public health dangers of sugar consumption, coupled with its relational pleasures (through associations with kinship, nurture and celebration) help illuminate how schools—as responsible agents—attempt to care for and govern children. It is sugar’s ambiguity, I argue, that enables it to become a crucial tool for children’s socialisation. Where and how sugar can be consumed responsibly, and which pleasures are deemed permissible or excessive, vary contextually: they are shaped through social class, and depend on the school policy being enacted. Beyond being an object to regulate, children’s pleasures in sugar are central to affective, social and class-informed practices of creating morally responsible persons.
Commercialised gambling products have spread rapidly through African countries in recent years and have been woven into the everyday experiences of young people. Research to date has documented this phenomenon through conventional social science methodologies, establishing an important body of knowledge. Absent from this work is research that adopts participatory and creative methods, often argued to be particularly well suited to empowering marginalised groups to co-produce research. In this piece, we describe a co-creative participatory approach to working with 24 young people in Malawi to explore experiences of commercial gambling and its impacts on their communities. Our approach was co-developed with the young people and produced a substantial body of community interviews, photovoice pieces, and creative representations of the research findings. Here, we focus on a song written and recorded by one of the young people that draws on and represents themes of distress, addiction, poverty, and false hope, which were present in the data the young people generated across the study.
This is a much-needed book for anyone working in the behavioural addictions field written and collated by some of the leading female researchers and practitioners. If you want an insightful and engaging female perspective on behavioural addictions, then this is the book read.' 'This book focuses on global female perspectives on a range of behavioural addictions. There is an important need to understand better girls and women and how they may experience and be impacted by behavioural addictions involving gambling, gaming, internet use, love, sex, pornography viewing, eating and other behaviors. This impressive book includes over 30 chapters detailing aspects of often difficult-to-identify clinical concerns and how they may be impacting the health of women and girls, all communicated from womens' perspectives. This book sheds new light on many important topics, and provides a lens through which to view these from international vantage points. As such, this is an essential book that contributes to promoting female health and well-being.' 'Taking into consideration the most important yet most understudied areas of behavioural addictions research, one would certainly point to gender issues first. The current book is a huge step to address this gap. The book edited by Fulvia Prever, Gretchen Blycker, and Laura Brandt provides an excellent collection of papers studying women-specific aspects of behavioural addictions, covering a wide range of perspectives, and with a special focus on aetiology, needs, and treatment issues. Moreover, the global perspective of the book, with contributions from all over the world, makes it especially unique and important.'
The contemporary visibility of 'digital addictions' to online gaming, watching pornography, social media and so on suggests the discovery of some new form of technologically facilitated disease. Yet, what we actually see in the symptoms of these various behaviours when described as 'addictions' are a series of social problems that range from the interpersonal to the sociocultural. In the current article, I work to step outside of the individ-ualising tendency of an addiction taxonomy to instead view digital addictions as a process of social diagnosis. In this way, digital addictions are understood as a reaction to historically and socioculturally informed forces. Specifically, I contend that a social diagnosis of the digital addiction concept tells us a great deal about contemporary cultural anxiety towards the ubiquity of digital media in our social worlds as it rubs up against concerns for productivity, socially lauded ideas of ostensibly 'natural' behaviours and worries about self-governance and self-control. I conclude with a series of pertinent questions about digital technologies, which are elided-if not actively foreclosed-within an addiction framework and which can better be made sense of by
Sex robots are playing critical roles in the ecology of robot and AI-enhanced entities. This chapter’s focuses are on emerging controversies involving sex robots and other forms of AI-enabled sexual activity, which often help to elucidate the emerging power and control relationships between humans and robots. Questions of whether robots “outclass” humans (discussed throughout the book) are construed in different manners when the robots involved are one’s own specially-designed sexual partners or even spouses. Many kinds of contact individuals have with robots are indeed disempowering (such as with surveillance-related robots); however, the commodification of various aspects of sex robot interaction discussed in this chapter can serve to increase perceptions of mastery and control that would otherwise not be available to many people, often with unsettling results.KeywordsRoboticsSex robotsArtificial intelligenceSexualityMarriagePowerControlAddictionMasterySurveillancePrivacy
This article argues that the framing of gambling is crucial for how it is dealt with at every level; from legislative, regulatory and commercial practice to the terms of media and civic debate. Whoever frames the debate has power over the ways that we can and cannot think about gambling, as well as what we can do about it.
We take the example of Britain as a case study in which, despite recent repeated calls for gambling to be regarded as a public health issue, it continues to be framed primarily in terms of economic activity and consumerism. We argue that this framing is the product of a particular political-economic model and that it is embedded in legislation and regulatory practice. We go on to describe the commercial landscape of gambling that has been produced by this framework as one which produces harm. As such, we make the point that framing is a key component of the commercial determinants of harm in gambling. The final section of our paper considers the various forms of political and commercial influence that infiltrate and shape the framing of gambling in Britain. This work was funded by Wellcome Trust through a Humanities and Social Sciences Fellowship to Heather Wardle (grant number: 200306).
The forms of regulatory interventions in the gambling market differ across countries, but two main types are distinguishable. One is a monopoly regime in which national governments carry the activities directly through companies fully controlled by the State (i.e., Finland, Norway). The other is a licence-based system in which private companies are allowed to operate in the market under public concessions or licences (i.e., Spain, Italy).In licensed markets, gambling companies are often multinational firms with holding, sub-holding and several controlled subsidiaries operating worldwide. States have not any direct or indirect participation as shareholders in these companies. Instead, they must seek financial capitals from the market. As a consequence, some of these multinational groups are listed, others are controlled by private international hedge funds and almost all are financed by private financial institutions, making the financial sector one of the main stakeholders of the gambling industry.This paper describes the corporate structure of multinational gambling groups on the Italian market with a focus on the direct and indirect participation of the financial sector. The main critical implications of the relationship between gambling companies and financial institutions include a lack of transparency and a great lobbying power that can be used to influence the regulator.
Die Digitalisierung unserer Lebenswelten ist allgegenwärtig und ermöglicht die Überwachung unseres Alltages in bisher ungekannten Formen. Warum aber gibt es dagegen so wenig Widerstand, obwohl Datenschützer immerzu warnen und Whistleblower wie Edward Snowden das ganze Ausmaß der Massenüberwachung öffentlich machen? Nils Zurawski konstatiert, dass solche Fragen am Phänomen selbst vorbeigehen, wenn sie nicht die Bedeutung des Konsums als elementares gesellschaftliches Element ernst nehmen. Er zeigt, welche symbolische Kraft Technologien haben und wieso Digitalisierung zu einer Re-Feudalisierung von Lebenswelten führt. In dieser Perspektive wird Überwachung zu einem Teil des Konsums und wirkt identitätsstiftend. Das Buch stellt Alternativen für andere Wege bereit, mit Digitalisierung umzugehen, und neue Möglichkeiten, Überwachung zu diskutieren.
This article examines Canada’s first internet gambling website blocking scheme, which was enacted in Quebec as part of the implementation of the province’s 2015 budget. Using qualitative research methods, the article illustrates the complexities of regulating online gambling. Influenced by critical sociological and anthropological studies of gambling, and taking a socio-legal, governmentality perspective, it shows how socio-legal studies can illuminate research on the regulation of gambling, and how the study of online gambling can, as a sentinel site for the regulation of online consumption, contribute to the development of socio-legal studies. Our analysis shows that the governmentality of online gambling is framed so as to exclude 1) a range of risks (e.g., related to consumer profiling and the capacity to stimulate “addictive consumption”), 2) the heterogeneity of everyday experience that connects online gambling with online addictive consumption more generally, and 3) a range of possibilities for governing online gambling otherwise.
A Critical Gambling Studies blog entry on Gambling, Deprivation and Class.
This study uses theories of risk society to examine how gamblers have experienced the exceptional situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and what are the risks they have associated with the situation. The qualitative data was gathered by the University of Helsinki and EHYT ry. Results show that the reduced availability of gambling has limited total consumption, and the risk of gambling-related harms has therefore become less pressing during the pandemic. While gambling is also a public health risk in addition to being a harmful activity, the policy measures during the COVID-19 pandemic have revealed that, at a societal level, the risk of infection was perceived as a more serious problem than the risk of gambling harms.
Excess sugar consumption has been shown to contribute directly to weight gain, thus contributing to the growing worldwide obesity epidemic. Interestingly, increased sugar consumption has been shown to repeatedly elevate dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens (NAc), in the mesolimbic reward pathway of the brain similar to many drugs of abuse. We report that varenicline, an FDA-approved nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) partial agonist that modulates dopamine in the mesolimbic reward pathway of the brain, significantly reduces sucrose consumption, especially in a long-term consumption paradigm. Similar results were observed with other nAChR drugs, namely mecamylamine and cytisine. Furthermore, we show that long-term sucrose consumption increases α4β2 * and decreases α6β2* nAChRs in the nucleus accumbens, a key brain region associated with reward. Taken together, our results suggest that nAChR drugs such as varenicline may represent a novel treatment strategy for reducing sugar consumption.
The concept of addiction is historically and culturally specific, becoming a common way of
understanding experience first in early nineteenth-century America. This paper considers
the relation to the concept of elements in current professional definitions of addiction (as
dependence). Addiction concepts have become a commonplace in storytelling, offering a
secular equivalent for possession as an explanation of how a good person can behave badly,
and as an inner demon over which a hero can triumph.
This collection of essays explores the complex and contested histories of drugs and narcotics in societies from ancient Greece to the present day. The Greek term pharmakon means both medicament and poison. The book shows how this verbal ambivalence encapsulates the ambiguity of man's use of chemically-active substances over the centuries to diminish pain, fight disease, and correct behaviour. It shows that the major substances so used, from herbs of the field to laboratory-produced synthetic medicines, have a healing potential, and have been widely employed both within and outside the medical profession. The boundary lines between use and abuse in society have been powerfully contested, while 'alternative' medicine has often sought to develop milder, purer, or more natural drugs. Clearly, these issues remain unresolved today: some highly addictive and dangerous substances such as cigarettes remain freely available, others are available only on prescription, while others are illegal and the objects of international contraband trade and the targets of 'drugs wars'.
I attempt to develop a critical geography of gambling in Australia with particular reference to the proliferation of electronic gaming machines (EGMs), the Australian variant of the Vegas-style ‘slot-machine’, devices that have infiltrated nearly all settlements in the country over the past two decades. As a starting point, I borrow from David Harvey's analysis of the dual logics of power within ‘capitalist imperialism’ to reveal the dialectical relations between the state and capital that have been responsible for the mass-production of local EGM spaces of consumption. I develop the argument that EGM gambling, through its reproduction of bounded spaces, represents a new wave of global capital accumulation where local citizens are reconstituted according to the imperative of global aleatory consumption. The overlay of the postmodern on the logic of capital accumulation amounts to a stunningly efficient form of exploitation where consumption has been reduced to the pure cash nexus. A new set of dependencies has emerged in that the state, social service sector, and gambling industry have become terminally reliant on the most disadvantaged members of society to resolve their internal contradictions. Thus, there exists a continued need for capital and the state to resolve the contradictions between the consumer and citizen, modern and postmodern, leisure and harm, private sector income and public service provision, local markets and global products, individual harm and community benefit. Given this dialectical relationship between state and industry, and the level of dependency its development has engendered, we may expect the continued expansion of EGM gambling spaces as long as capital accumulation is the key goal in the neoliberal economy of Australia.
Impulse buying generates over $4 billion in annual sales volume in the United States. With the growth of e-commerce and television shopping channels, consumers have easy access to impulse purchasing opportunities, but little is known about this sudden, compelling, hedonically complex purchasing behavior in non-Western cultures. Yet cultural factors moderate many aspects of consumer's impulsive buying behavior, including self-identity, normative influences, the suppression of emotion, and the postponement of instant gratification. From a multi-country survey of consumers in Australia, United States, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia, our analyses show that both regional level factors (individualism-collectivism) and individual cultural difference factors (independent-interdependent self-concept) systematically influence impulsive purchasing behavior.
This reading alerts us that Americans hold no monopoly on popular culture. Geertz relates both the various events surrounding and the deeper cultural meaning of an example of popular culture, cockfighting on a South Pacific island. He contrasts his interpretation of engaging in “deep play” (extremely high stakes activities) with Jeremy Bentham’s famous earlier characterization of irrational behavior. For Geertz, cockfighting in Bali engages central cultural values such as honor, dignity, and respect. Thus, rather than seeing Balinese men betting unreasonable amounts of money on a mere game, Geertz portrays what appears as play to be a deadly serious struggle over relative status.
Attention to medical ethics has become an integral and essential aspect of modern medicine. No longer can physicians presume that the only judgments facing them are clinical: in many departments of practice, ethical dilemmas are multiplying as never before, and with terrifyingly complex ramifications: personal, legal, professional, administrative, political and from a practical viewpoint, not least financial. Nowadays it is no longer possible to initiate clinical trials and tests or to make therapeutic innovations without extensive attention to their ethical implications. On both sides of the Atlantic, though particularly in North America, such deliberations are often undertaken with considerable bureaucratic formality, and in an increasingly juridical, even legalistic, atmosphere [22]; [73]; [74]; [75]; [76]; [79].
Investigating the current interest in obesity and fatness, this book explores the problems and ambiguities that form the lived experience of 'fat' women in contemporary Western society. Engaging with dominant ideas about 'fatness', and analysing the assumptions that inform anti-fat attitudes in the West, The 'Fat' Female Body explores the moral panic over the 'obesity epidemic', and the intersection of medicine and morality in pathologising 'fat' bodies. It contributes to the emerging field of fat studies by offering not only alternative understandings of subjectivity, the (re)production of public knowledge(s) of 'fatness', and politics of embodiment, but also the possibility of (re)reading 'fat' bodies to foster more productive social relations.
What is 'addiction'? What does it say about us, our social arrangements and our political preoccupations? Where is it going as an idea and what is at stake in its ongoing production? Drawing on ethnographic research, interviews and media and policy texts, this book traces the remaking of addiction in contemporary Western societies. © Suzanne Fraser, David Moore and Helen Keane 2014. All rights reserved.
Over the past 40 years, rates of adult smoking have fallen dramatically, yet young adults continue to smoke substantially more than any other age group. At a time when just about everyone knows that smoking is bad for you, why do so many college students smoke? Will they eventually give up smoking, either as graduation approaches or once they enter the "real work"? Lighting Up investigates such questions about smoking and explores the experience and perspectives of hundreds of college students.
The Western financial system is rapidly coming to resemble nothing as much as a vast casino. Every day games are played in this casino that involve sums of money so large that they cannot be imagined. At night the games go on at the other side of the world. In the towering office blocks that dominate all the great cities of the world, rooms are full of chain-smoking young men all playing these games. Their eyes are fixed on computer screens flickering with changing prices. As in a casino, the world of high finance today offers the players a choice of games. Instead of roulette, blackjack, or poker, there is dealing to be done – the foreign exchange market and all its variations; or in bonds, government securities or shares. In all these markets you may place bets on the future by dealing forward and by buying or selling options and all sorts of other recondite financial inventions. Some of the players – banks especially – play with very large stakes. These are also many quite small operators. There are tipsters, too, selling advice, and peddlers of systems to the gullible. And the croupiers in this global financial casino are the big bankers and brokers. They play, as it were, ‘for the house’. It is they, in the long run, who make the best living.
The body is not only a cultural object in illness or affliction. Bodily experience is also structured through the symbolic category of health. Health, like illness, is a concept grounded in the experiences and concerns of everyday life. While there is not the same urgency to explain health as there is to account for serious illness, thoughts about health easily evoke reflections about the quality of physical, emotional, and social existence. Like illness, it is a category of experience that reveals tacit assumptions about individual and social reality. Talking about health is a way people give expression to our culture’s notions of well-being or quality of life. Health is a ‘key word,’ a generative concept, a value attached to or suggestive of other cardinal values. ‘Health’ provides a means for personal and social evaluation.
Originally published in 1984, The Body and Society flew against prevailing trends which asked sociologists to understand society in terms of abstractions such as structure, class and function. Instead, in a series of dazzling chapters, Bryan S Turner argued that the body should be the axis of sociological analysis. The Second Edition of this ground-breaking book includes a new introduction which analyzes the social changes which have given a special prominence to the body in contemporary social theory, and develops Turner's own notion of a ‘somatic society’, a society within which major political and personal problems are both problematized in the body and expressed through it.
Tabloid headlines attack the binge drinking of young women. Debates about the classification of cannabis continue, while major public health campaigns seek to reduce and ultimately eliminate smoking through health warnings and legislation. But the history of public health is not a simple one of changing attitudes resulting from increased medical knowledge, though that has played a key role, for instance since the identification of the link between smoking and lung cancer. As Virginia Berridge shows in this fascinating exploration, attitudes to public health, and efforts to change it, have historically been driven by social, cultural, political, and economic and industrial factors, as well as advances in science. They have resulted in different responses to drugs, alcohol, and tobacco at different times, in different parts of the world.