The British Journal of Sociology 2004 Volume 55 Issue 2 Gerda Reith (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Glasgow) (Corresponding author email: g.reith@socsci.gla.ac.uk) © London School of Economics and Political Science 2004 ISSN 0007-1315 print/1468-4446 online. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA on behalf of the LSE. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-4446.2004.00019.x Consumption and its discontents: addiction, identity and the problems of freedom Gerda Reith Abstract The focus of this paper is on the notion of ‘addictive consumption’, conceived as a set of discourses that are embedded within wider socio-historical processes of governance and control. It examines the discursive convergences and conflicts between practices of consumption and notions of addiction, which it notes are con- sistently represented in terms of the oppositional categories of self-control vs. compulsion and freedom vs. determinism. These interrelations are explored with reference to the development of notions of addiction, and their relation to shift- ing configurations of identity, subjectivity and governance. Finally, it suggests that the notion of ‘addiction’ has particular valence in advanced liberal societies, where an unprecedented emphasis on the values of freedom, autonomy and choice not only encourage the conditions for its prolifer- ation into ever wider areas of social life, but also reveal deep tensions within the ideology of consumerism itself. Keywords: Addiction, consumption; freedom; governance; identity ‘Every age develops its own peculiar forms of pathology, which express in exaggerated form, its underlying character structure’ (Christopher Lasch 1979: 41) 1. Introduction The focus of this paper is on the development of a paradox within affluent western consumer societies, whereby the values of freedom, autonomy and choice associated with the spread of consumerism have been accompanied by the emergence of an oppositional set of discourses concerned with a vitiation