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Agriculture and Human Values 20: 209210, 2003.Book reviewAffluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic. By John
De Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas H. Naylor. San
Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2001, 268 pp.,
Pb, ISBN 1-57675-199-6AMITRAJEET A. BATABYAL
Department of Economics, Rochester Institute of
Technology, Rochester, NY 14623-5604, USAAmitrajeet A. Batabyal is Arthur J. Gosnell Professor
of Economics at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
His research interests include ecological, environmental, and natural resource economics and the
interface of economics with philosophy and political
science. He has published over 260 books, book
chapters, book reviews, and journal articles in these
areas.According to this book, there is no gainsaying the
fact that the American way of life is unequivocally
comsumptive in nature. At virtually every stage in our
lives, the trinity of big businesses, advertising firms,
and the media are constantly encouraging us to buy
something or the other; moreover, they are ingraining
in our minds the notion that in order to be happy we
must perennially be consuming and thereby keeping
up with the Joneses to the best of our abilities. As a
result, most Americans now have developed a painful,
contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload,
debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged
pursuit of more (p. 2). This debilitating condition is
referred to as affluenza and the purpose of this book
is to first chronicle the symptoms and the causes of
affluenza and then to suggest potential treatment
options.The 14 chapters in Part 1 discuss the manifold
symptoms of affluenza. In Chapter 5 we are told
that affluenza has stretched peoples limits to such
an extent that...