Critical Perspectives on Addiction

Critical Perspectives on Addiction

Our understandings of addiction are rapidly changing. New technologies and biomedical treatments are reconfiguring addiction as a brain disease, and the concept of "addiction" is expanding to cover an ever widening array of substances and behaviours, from food to shopping. This volume looks critically at how addiction has been framed historically, how new treatment technologies are reconfiguring addiction, and how "addiction" is being expanded beyond illicit drugs and alcohol to explain phenomena such as "excessive" eating and gambling. It also examines how medical, behavioural and punitive frameworks come together to shape and control "addicts," often in ways that reinforce racial oppression.

Featuring the work of several new, up-and-coming scholars working to deepen theoretical perspectives on addiction and its relationship to social control and deviance, this volume fills a gap in addiction studies by offering critical perspectives that interrogate and challenge traditional and/or mainstream understandings of addiction.