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

The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit

Health, Fitness & Dieting

ALEXANDER, BRUCE

Addiction & Recovery

Oxford University Press

Murder In Grub Street (A Sir John Fielding Mystery)

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

London Little Brown 1996

The legendary--and blind--eighteenth-century judge, Sir John Fielding, cofounder of London's first police force, debuts in the case of a lord whose apparent suicide is exposed as a fountainhead of deception, greed, and murder.

Blind Justice

Little Brown, 1995

Blind Justice (Sir John Fielding)

The legendary--and blind--eighteenth-century judge, Sir John Fielding, cofounder of London's first police force, debuts in the case of a lord whose apparent suicide is exposed as a fountainhead of deception, greed, and murder.

Literature & Fiction

United States

Putnam Adult

The legendary, blind seventeenth-century English judge, Sir John Fielding, star of the critically praised Blind Justice, appears in his second adventure, probing London society--with the help of his "eyes," young Jeremy Proctor--for a killer.

Murder in Grub Street (Sir John Fielding)

The legendary, blind eighteenth-century judge returns in his third mystery, in which he investigates the murder of a sea captain, possibly at the hands of his own stepson. By the author of Blind Justice. BOMC Alt.

Watery Grave (A Sir John Fielding Mystery)

An blind eighteenth-century judge, Sir John Fielding and his assistant and ward, Jeremy Proctor, investigate a series of murders that leads them around streets and alleyways of eighteenth-century London. 15,000 first printing. BOMC Alt.

Person or Persons Unknown (Sir John Fielding Mysteries)

In his fifth appearance, eighteenth-century London judge Sir John Fielding--a favorite of newspaper reviewers coast to coast--has his fill of familial greed, deception, and homicide among the lowly and the lordly.

Jack, Knave and Fool (Sir John Fielding Mysteries)

The latest case for Sir John Fielding, a blind eighteenth-century London judge, finds Fielding and his ward Jeremy investigating the strange reappearance of a long missing nobleman shortly after his brother's execution and his connection with an American's recent suicide. 10,000 first printing.

Death of a Colonial (Sir John Fielding Mysteries)

With a notorious gang of black criminals on the warpath in eighteenth-century London, blind judge Sir John Fielding is determined to put an end to the robbery and violence, with the help of his youthful assistant, Jeremy. 12,500 first printing.

The Color of Death: A Sir John Fielding Mystery

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Books by ALEXANDER, BRUCE