Policy Press Governing Health and Consumption: Sensible Citizens, Behaviour and the City (Policy Press Publications - Hardback Volumes Only)

"Governing Health and Consumption" examines the governance of contemporary lifestyle risks such as obesity, sedentarism and drinking alcohol. It argues that such processes are inextricable from the wider political, economic, social and spatial contexts within which decision-making is given meaning and attains social value. Bringing together a wealth of original research from the US and UK with an explicitly interdisciplinary theoretical framework, "Governing Health and Consumption" critically explores how encouraging "sensible behaviour" stems from a broader need to reconcile tensions between self-restraint and self-indulgence; coercion and freedom; and, supply and demand within neoliberal societies. "Governing Health and Consumption" asks what behaving sensibly might reveal about the contestations contained within the wider regulation of unhealthy behaviours, and will appeal to sociologists, geographers, anthropologists and those concerned with the governance of health and lifestyles.