The Saturated Society

Pekka Sulkunen is Professor of Sociology at the University of Helsinki

Introduction Lifestyle and the Social Bond The Good Order of Nature: Progress and Criticism in Adam Smith's Sociology of Modernity Autonomy: the Contracting individual Intimacy: the Romantic Self The New Consumer Society and Its Critics The Welfare State in the Consumer Society From Pastoral to Epistolary Power Inner-Directed or Other-Directed? Agency and Citizenship in Mass Society Re-Inventing the Social Contract

A provocative and stimulating intervention in a debate of key contemporary importance. Chris Shilling Professor of Sociology, University of Kent Pekka Sulkunen offers a fresh look at the transition from industrial society to consumer capitalism. He asks important questions about how consumer desires are produced and regulated and what it means to attempt to regulate the way we live. This book is stimulating, erudite and important. Sue Scott Pro Vice Chancellor at Glasgow Caledonian University 'A wide-ranging and multidimensional book...Overall, this is an interesting, thought-provoking and challenging book, and there is much in the thesis of the saturated society that we might usefully reflect upon.' Acta Sociologica September 'The Saturated Society is an erudite and well reflected analysis of the complexities of current consumer culture in general as well as in relation to the handling of specific risk and lifestyle issues of consumption... indispensable for the consumption researcher who wishes to be provoked in relation to her/his own habitual analytical assumptions about consumer culture.' Journal of Consumer Culture