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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Turbo-capitalism, a personal and political indictment, 12 July 2009
This review is from: All Consuming (Paperback)
I read this book in a day and found it totally absorbing. In its criticism of consumerist culture, it covers similar ground to Oliver James's "Affluenza" Richard Layard's, "Happiness" and Richard Wilkinson's work on inequality. In its discussion of personal solutions it refers to the "Idleness" project of Tom Hodgkinson. In the discussion of political solutions Neal Lawson reveals himself as the democratic collectivist Chair of Compass, the Labour based but Greenish leaning pressure group. You don't have to agree with all his recommendations to enjoy the book. Having read it, it's difficult to disagree with his contention that the solution to our current economic, environmental and existential problems will involve embracing "less" rather than "more".
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very interesting but a little Condescending, 1 Jun 2011
This review is from: All Consuming (Paperback)
As someone who is enthralled by the subject of excessive consumption, I was very intrigued by this book. The premise seems simple enough; to study what went wrong with society, how it happened, how to fix it, and what's the alternative. The book delivers with vast amounts of usable and interesting facts, figures and knowledge. But the way in which the author has written the book grates on me, and it becomes more of an issue towards the end.
The book starts out very strong and contains lots of interesting facts and figures, and makes reference to many of the oft referenced examples of excessive consumption (tulip-mania etc) , however, when the book moves onto `what went wrong' and `how to fix it', the author begins to come off as quite condescending, as if we've all been turbo consuming as he has had to sit back helpless to stop it. At times the author is also hypocritical, a prime example of this is his scorn for green house pollution caused by cars, yet proudly announces that he drives a VW van because he believes himself to be "hippie", when in fact it is well known that older vehicles are much more polluting than their modern counterparts. By the end of the book it feels like a political manifesto for the green party.
However, in spite of these flaws I still give this book 4 stars, as the information contained within it is shocking, entertaining, disturbing and accurate. It holds a mirror up to the uncontrolled buying of modern Britain and this makes for a fascinating read. You may find your interest tailing off towards the end of the book, but even then the book is still worth a read for what came beforehand.
All in all, the premise of this book is a very good one, and it contains a vast amount of interesting information. I just can't help but feeling it could have been written in a slightly different style. But then again, I'm not a published author...
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent, but needs more context, 2 Sep 2009
This review is from: All Consuming (Paperback)
In an eminently readable and absorbing style, Lawson hammers home his message of "Turbo-consumption" as civilization-destroying and "less is more". His analysis of the psychology of advertising and consumption is particularly adroit. While it may be true, as other reviewers have noted, that he adds little to the existing literature on the subject. coming in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the thirties and emphasizing the way corporate advertising has twisted our psyches and manipulated us into buying more than we can afford, his book has a particularly timely message. His argument, however, also merits better contextualizing.
Lawson is a top figure in Compass, which is doing its best to wean the Labour Party from Blairite neoliberalism. To do so, and to encourage a more rational and humane pattern of consumption, he needs a broader historical and theoretical base than he presents in All Consuming. His six or seven pages on the economic history leading up to Turbo-consumption (from the ancient world to the present!) are too thin to support his extended presentation of the mammoth credit orgy in the last twenty years, and, consequently, to explain why the political action he desires will not be achievable without massive commitment from groups and individuals.
In short, while Lawson's laudable list of alternatives runs the gamut from personal transformation to government action - taxes, redistribution, renewal of social legislation, curbs on advertising - the book's argument needs supplementing from the field of political economy: a clear analysis of why we have, in Europe and North America as well as the UK that is his principal focus, been turned into turbo-consumers, rather than producers.
A second edition of this fine book would benefit by a chapter dealing with the political eoonomy and history of globalization and an explanation of how and why expanding world production and advertising-enforced consumption collided with the ecological limits to our planetary existence to create the double economic and climate crisis we are now undergoing.
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