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Shopping Our Way to Safety: How We Changed from Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves

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I worry about my family's health. I buy organic food, I use "green" cleaning products, and I buy bottled water. But I have always had an uncomfortable feeling that these choices were woefully inadequate to protect them and the planet we inhabit.

Reading "Shopping Our Way to Safety" showed me how my efforts are "sold" to me, along with the belief that I can protect my family by being a conscientious consumer. Szasz explains that individual consumption not only doesn't make us safer, it masks the true problems of the toxins that fill our environment. What will make a difference is when we all work together to impact policy changes to address these huge problems.

After reading the book, I notice examples of Szasz's theory of the inverted quarantine everyday. Yesterday, and I am NOT making this up, I saw a TV ad for a product that removes toxins from your body through the bottom of your feet while you sleep!

"Shopping Our Way to Safety" gave me a framework to understand how we got into this environmental mess and how we can get out of it. It is easy to read and filled with a fascinating history of how many of us came to believe that we could ignore the rest of society while imagining that we could protect ourselves. Szasz never pontificates nor slams you with dense sociological theory. He does explain the race and class dimensions of the problem and gives you plenty of sources for more information. Easy to understand.

After reading this book, I donated money to my local environmental justice group and our state-wide occupational health and safety organization. I plan to work with both of them to protect people from workplace toxins and to demand cleaner air, cleaner water, and non-toxic food and goods, not only for my family but for all of us.

Szasz's twofold premise is that not only is the plethora of contemporary products touted as helping improve the environment not doing all that much, but these are also diminishing the prospect that the large-scale, systematic programs and practices required for actually improving the environment will be conceived and promulgated. To bring a focus to his premise and multifaceted argument for it, Szasz reaches back to the fallout shelter phenomenon of the early 1960s. And he also points to the phenomenon of suburbanization which accelerated about that time and continued over the following few decades. These two phenomena--the first part of a government program to deal with the nuclear threat, the latter a widespread sociological movement--are ways large numbers of Americans responded to threats and concerns in their day; similarly to how large numbers of Americans are responding to environmental, ecological, and health threats these days.

The plethora of environmentally "conscious" products and practices (e. g., recycling, diet regimens) allow individuals to devise a "personal commodity bubble for one's body". While this bubble does offer genuine physical and psychological wellbeing, collectively--even considering the millions who follow similar environmentally aware lifestyles--they bring virtually no material improvement to the environment. Nor in that they bring no improvement, do they do much to conduce to better health or a better environment for the society in general.

The phenomenon of suburbanization exemplifies how individuals--mostly more affluent individual families--make choices to improve their own lives but do nothing to resolve fundamental social problems. The fallout shelter phenomenon urged by government and enthusiastically bought into by many businesses exemplifies for Szasz how major programs devised and promoted by central institutions can, like suburbanization, be a way to avoid coming to grips with a problem, in this case the environmental problems which are worsening year by year.

The way many individuals are responding individually and in some cases by communities or groups to the environmental problems is a form of "inverted quarantine" whereby they are walling themselves off from deteriorating environmental conditions instead of acting to improve the environment permanently for the good not only of their own children but for future generations and for their own society and global society. Szasz does not argue that the environmental products and the consumer choices and lifestyles developed around them should be abandoned--even as "inverted quarantines"--but that no matter the number and ingenuity of such products and increasing numbers of individuals availing themselves of them, these are "not enough". The professor of sociology at the U. of California-Santa Cruz and author of the book "EcoPopulism" tenders some specific changes in perspective on environmental issues and some specific policies for environmental improvement. Mainly though, he argues for a society-wide approach to dealing with evident and perpetuating environmental problems which can be led only by government at all levels and social policies and practices that are different from consumerism or fancy types of escapism. Only when the "fallout shelter" mentality of dealing with a problem is put aside will relevant, effective ways for dealing with environmental problems come about.

"Shopping Our Way to Safety" by Andrew Szasz offers an unique perspective on environmental sociology. Mr. Szasz is a professor and award-winning author whose exemplary writing skills combine to produce an immensely informative yet highly readable text. Mr. Szasz introduces the term 'inverted quarantine' to describe how Americans have increasingly sought to shield themselves from sociological and environmental dangers through the act of consumption. Mr. Szasz's original and thought-provoking analysis reveals a number of valuable lessons to be learned by environmentalists and others who may be seeking insight into American society.

To organize the discussion, Mr. Szasz splits the book into three sections. First, he recounts two case studies to illustrate inverted quarantine in action in American history; second, he examines how problems associated with drinking, eating and breathing have opened up opportunities for the marketers of inverted quarantine products; and third, he assesses the consequences for society when the masses engage in inverted quarantine behavior.

Comparing and contrasting the individual versus the collective, Mr. Szasz contends that the ordinary citizen's fear of racial tensions, pollution and crime contributed greatly to the rise of the suburbs and the decay of inner cities (to the detriment of American society and culture). On the other hand, Mr. Szasz discusses how the fallout shelter panic of 1961 highlighted the impossibility of individual escape from nuclear annihilation; which subsequently helped the U.S. and USSR achieve detente. The takeaway is that individualism tends to fray society; whereas collective action solves big problems.

With this insight, Mr. Szasz goes on to alert us to the myriad chemical and biological hazards in our drinking water, food and air. Corporations have exploited our insecurities to their benefit while sometimes offering little protection to us or the environment. For example, Mr. Szasz excoriates the bottled water industry for its shoddy product quality and massive environmental footprint; big agriculture for its careless use of antibiotics, growth hormones, and genetically modified seeds; and the personal hygiene industry for sometimes playing fast and loose with the ingredients that are used in their products. Mr. Szasz believes that most consumers are not aware of the degree to which they are being poisoned; but to the extent that a growing segment of the consumer market engages in the inverted quarantine behavior of buying products that are perceived to be healthier or less harmful, they frequently do not obtain the full benefits that have been promised.

Mr. Szasz astutely notes the consequences. As a sizeable portion of the populace believes itself to be immune from social ills through adoptation of the inverted quarantine strategy, the political will to meaningfully address large social issues is dramatically reduced. But no matter what one might wish, the individual will fare no better surviving an environmental meltdown caused by global warming than surviving a nuclear holocaust. Therefore, Mr. Szasz suggests that environmentalists must begin to more aggressively highlight the limitations of consumerism in order to build greater support for developing a more durable social-movement solution to the environmental crisis. Collevtively, we can help ensure a better future for all.

I highly recommend this outstanding book to everyone.

It was a good read, very informative and insightful, i had him as a proffessor and it was very much like his lectures.