| Description |
xi, 323 pages; 23 cm |
| Contents |
Introduction: inverted quarantine -- Two historical case studies -- The fallout shelter panic of 1961 -- Suburbanization as inverted quarantine -- Assembling a personal commodity bubble for one's body -- Drinking -- Eating -- Breathing -- Consequences of inverted quarantine -- Imaginary refuge -- Political anesthesia -- Conclusion: the future of an illusion -- Notes -- References -- Index |
| Summary |
"Many Americans today rightly fear that they are constantly exposed to dangerous toxins in their immediate environment: tap water is contaminated with chemicals; foods contain pesticide residues, hormones, and antibiotics; even the air we breathe, outside and indoors, carries invisible poisons. Yet we have responded not by pushing for governmental regulation, but instead by shopping. What accounts for this swift and dramatic response? And what are its unintended consequences?" |
|
"Andrew Szasz examines this phenomenon in Shopping Our Way to Safety. Within a couple of decades, he reveals, bottled water and water filters, organic food, "green" household cleaners and personal hygiene products, and "natural" bedding and clothing have gone from being marginal, niche commodities to becoming mass consumer items. Szasz sees these fatalistic, individual responses to collective environmental threats as an inverted form of quarantine, aiming to shut the healthy individual in and the threatening world out." "Szasz argues that when consumers believe that they are indeed buying a defense from environmental hazards, they feel less urgency to actually do something to fix them. To achieve real protection and real security, he concludes, we must give up the illusion of individual solutions and together seek substantive reform."--BOOK JACKET |
| Notes |
Formerly CIP. Uk |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Also available online via the World Wide Web, by subscription to ECHO (Ebrary) |
| Subject |
Environmental economics -- United States.
|
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Consumption (Economics) -- United States.
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| LC no. |
2007026438 |
| ISBN |
9780816635085 (hc : alk. paper) |
|
0816635080 (hc : alk. paper) |
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9780816635092 (pb : alk. paper) |
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0816635099 (pb : alk. paper) |
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