Saturated Society : Governing Risk and Lifestyles in Consumer Culture

"A provocative and stimulating intervention in a debate of key contemporary importance." - Chris Shilling, University of Kent

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

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

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

The book critically examines:

• Neo-Liberal ideology and the free market
• The Sociology of Modernity
• The New Consumer Society
• Citizenship in Mass Society
• The power of Autonomy
• The interaction of Regulation and Agency

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

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

Pekka Sulkunen is Professor of Sociology at the University of Helsinki