Expanding Addiction: Critical Essays

Reviews / Votes

More than a collection of essays, this eminently readable and thought-provoking volume makes plain the importance of recognizing - and addressing - addiction's many complex causes. Its call for, and articulation of, "critical addiction studies" will be highly useful to educators from a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, neurobiology, public policy, criminology, and psychology.

-Katherine Beckett, Sociology, University of Washington

During a period when the addiction-as-disease paradigm is increasingly dominating scientific and policy discourse across a wide range of domains, this remarkable and timely anthology provides a much-needed corrective to the influence of biological reductionism and the simplification of a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon. Brilliantly compiled and introduced, Expanding Addiction reminds us of the inadequacies of considering what are called addictive behaviours in the absence of historical and socio-cultural contexts. It is essential reading for students and policymakers alike.

-David R. Bewley-Taylor, International Relations and Public Policy, Swansea University, and author of International Drug Control: Consensus Fractured.

With popular television shows like Addicted airing alongside of an ever-expanding drug treatment industry, why do we still know so little about addiction? Expanding Addiction provides an answer. This essential book is a much-needed addition to knowledge in the field of addiction. Granfield and Reinarman's rich anthology introduces readers to critical addiction studies -- a sociological analysis of addiction. This outstanding anthology consists of groundbreaking classical foundational and contemporary essays by leading experts that challenge the disease model and narrow neurological explanations of addiction. The authors examine the historical construction of addiction and make clear how social, political, and cultural factors shape our ideas about addiction, social responses, and treatment of people classified as "addicts." Expanding Addiction also challenges readers to reexamine why more and more behaviors such as gambling, sexual desire, and computer use are labeled addiction and question why coerced treatment and punishment are central to a growing treatment industry. Expanding Addiction is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding and changing the way our society deals with addiction.

-Susan Boyd, Faculty of Human and Social Development, University of Victoria

This collection of essays shows how behaviors labeled as addictive are in fact socially constructed, and much more scientifically understood as occurring in a social and political context than as behaviors resulting from "possession" of the brain by a foreign substance. The introductory chapter alone would advance a reader's understanding of what is called addictive behavior more than all the newspaper and magazine articles most people have read in the last 25 years. If there is an antidote for disinformation, this book is it.

-Ira Glasser, current President, Drug Policy Alliance

Both the study of addiction and the practice of treatment have long been dominated by a narrow view of addiction as simply a problem of individual biology-as a "disease of the brain." In this rich and timely collection, Granfield and Reinarman bring together both classic and recent arguments that help to right the balance, highlighting the often neglected social, economic, cultural and political contexts that shape both the experience of addiction and its very definition. Expanding Addiction is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of addiction and more intelligent social policies to address it.

-Elliott Currie, Criminology, Law, and Society, University of California, Irvine, author of Reckoning: Drugs, the Cities, and the American Future and Crime and Punishment in America.