Shopping Our Way to Safety

Shopping Our Way to Safety

How We Changed from Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves

Andrew Szasz

Table of Contents

PRESS
Chronicle of Higher Education article
Baltimore City Paper review

$24.95 cloth/jacket
ISBN 978-0-8166-3508-5
ISBN-10 0-8166-3508-0

What could be wrong with bottled water and sunscreen?

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.

Sharply critiquing these products’ effectiveness as well as the unforeseen political consequences of relying on them to keep us safe from harm, 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, real security, he concludes, we must give up the illusion of individual solutions and together seek substantive reform.

“Szasz’s message is timely and incisive.” —New Scientist

“For an engaging look at the environmental beliefs and actions of the general public, look no further than Szasz’s new book. Szasz has given readers an intriguing framework for understanding current environmental issues.” —Choice

“Szasz is right—Americans are not going to shop their way to a cleaner, healthier, more just, and more sustainable society. Whole industries have to be reorganized—and that's a much bigger task than merely offering organic and energy-efficient alternative products.” —Baltimore City Paper

“Shopping Our Way to Safety is an important contribution. Szasz makes a powerful and politically astute argument about the wrong-headedness of individualized solutions to collective environmental problems, and takes the reader through the promises and pitfalls of consuming our way out of environmental crises. This well-written and accessible book nicely summarizes the key problems with individualized consumer approaches to environmental regulation. While scholarly, the book is a fine piece of public sociology that can be enjoyed by an interested lay public and undergraduate audience.” —Canadian Journal of Sociology

Andrew Szasz is professor and chair of the sociology department at the University of California at Santa Cruz and author of the award-winning EcoPopulism.

320 pages | 16 b&w photos | 5 7/8 x 9 | 2007

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Inverted Quarantine

Part I. Two Historical Case Studies
1. The Fallout Shelter Panic of 1961
2. Suburbanization as Inverted Quarantine

Part II. Assembling a Personal Commodity Bubble for One’s Body
3. Drinking
4. Eating
5. Breathing

Part III. Consequences of Inverted Quarantine
6. Imaginary Refuge
7. Political Anesthesia

Conclusion: The Future of an Illusion
Notes
References
Index



Shopping Our Way to Safety *How We Changed from Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves* Andrew Szasz Table of Contents PRESS Chronicle of Higher Education article Baltimore City Paper review		$24.95 cloth/jacket ISBN 978-0-8166-3508-5 ISBN-10 0-8166-3508-0
What could be wrong with bottled water and sunscreen? 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. Sharply critiquing these products’ effectiveness as well as the unforeseen political consequences of relying on them to keep us safe from harm, 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, real security, he concludes, we must give up the illusion of individual solutions and together seek substantive reform. “Szasz’s message is timely and incisive.” —New Scientist “For an engaging look at the environmental beliefs and actions of the general public, look no further than Szasz’s new book. Szasz has given readers an intriguing framework for understanding current environmental issues.” —Choice “Szasz is right—Americans are not going to shop their way to a cleaner, healthier, more just, and more sustainable society. Whole industries have to be reorganized—and that's a much bigger task than merely offering organic and energy-efficient alternative products.” —Baltimore City Paper “Shopping Our Way to Safety is an important contribution. Szasz makes a powerful and politically astute argument about the wrong-headedness of individualized solutions to collective environmental problems, and takes the reader through the promises and pitfalls of consuming our way out of environmental crises. This well-written and accessible book nicely summarizes the key problems with individualized consumer approaches to environmental regulation. While scholarly, the book is a fine piece of public sociology that can be enjoyed by an interested lay public and undergraduate audience.” —Canadian Journal of Sociology Andrew Szasz is professor and chair of the sociology department at the University of California at Santa Cruz and author of the award-winning EcoPopulism. 320 pages \| 16 b&w photos \| 5 7/8 x 9 \| 2007 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction: Inverted Quarantine Part I. Two Historical Case Studies 1. The Fallout Shelter Panic of 1961 2. Suburbanization as Inverted Quarantine Part II. Assembling a Personal Commodity Bubble for One’s Body 3. Drinking 4. Eating 5. Breathing Part III. Consequences of Inverted Quarantine 6. Imaginary Refuge 7. Political Anesthesia Conclusion: The Future of an Illusion Notes References Index