{"product_id":"in-praise-of-addiction-or-how-we-can-learn-to-love-dependency-in-a-damaged-world-1","title":"In Praise of Addiction: Or How We Can Learn to Love Dependency in a Damaged World","description":"\u003cp\u003eby Elizabeth F.S. Roberts\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePrinceton University Press\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2\/3\/2026, hardcover\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSKU: 9780691245805\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA transformative way of understanding addiction--and an invitation to find connection in the pleasures of life we know are bad for us\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eElizabeth Roberts has experienced the suffering wrought by addiction: her sister's destructive alcoholism and dependency on prescription drugs, her mother's hoarding, and her own struggles with binge eating. As for so many of us, addiction brought about self-loathing, reflecting her individual failure to exercise self-control, to keep it together. But during her fieldwork studying chemical exposure in Mexico City, her sense of addiction got turned upside down. She witnessed her neighbors, both young and old, defiantly celebrate their compulsive dependencies on alcohol, drugs, and junk food instead of hiding them in shame. Roberts began to wonder if everything she thought she knew about addiction was wrong.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eIn Praise of Addiction\u003c\/i\u003e shares the unexpected journey that led Roberts to a new understanding of addiction. Taking lessons from her years in Mexico City as well as from addiction researchers, harm reduction activists, and scholars of religion, philosophy, and anthropology, Roberts pays close attention to the external forces that so often fuel the damage of addiction. As her neighbors in Mexico City suggest, the adverse health effects brought on by their dependencies on Coca-Cola, processed foods, drugs, and alcohol have more to do with the ongoing effects of the drug war and NAFTA than any personal failings. Taking up this ecological framework, Roberts draws a line between vice that isolates and addiction that connects, a distinction she movingly integrates into her own life and family, making a case for sharing in the pleasures--and suffering--of dependency.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProvocative and deeply humane, \u003ci\u003eIn Praise of Addiction\u003c\/i\u003e invites readers to cast aside the shame, self-hatred, and judgment associated with addiction and discover how dependency can serve as a binding force worthy of our most profound devotion.\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReviews:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Roberts offers an engaging ethnography of addiction and vice in Mexico City, demonstrating how addiction can serve as both an act of devotion and a rebuke against middle- and upper-class judgments about pleasure, connection, debt, and value.\" -- Kelly Ray Knight, author of \u003ci\u003eaddicted.pregnant.poor\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A powerful, honest, and thought-provoking reimagining of addiction and its cultural and historical complexities that only an anthropologist could produce. With great care and sensitivity, Roberts gives us the best of ethnography and memoir while making the strong case that the two are always inextricably linked.\" -- Jason De León, author of \u003ci\u003eSoldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Bold, witty, and incisive, \u003ci\u003eIn Praise of Addiction\u003c\/i\u003e is a much-needed antidote to the usual framing of addiction as disease. Roberts's genre-bending book defies disciplinary boundaries and opens new ways of thinking and being. A must-read for anthropologists, addiction specialists, and anyone else who has ever been judged for their dependencies.\" -- Angela Garcia, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Way That Leads Among the Lost: Life, Death, and Hope in Mexico City's Anexos\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAbout the Author:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eElizabeth F. S. Roberts\u003c\/b\u003e is professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan and the author of \u003ci\u003eGod's Laboratory: Assisted Reproduction in the Andes\u003c\/i\u003e. Since 2013, she has participated in collaborative environmental health research in Mexico City.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Burning Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52286077108507,"sku":"In Praise of Addiction","price":29.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0466\/5121\/files\/81aHFa6LG6L._SL1500.jpg?v=1780354552","url":"https:\/\/burningbooks.com\/products\/in-praise-of-addiction-or-how-we-can-learn-to-love-dependency-in-a-damaged-world-1","provider":"Burning Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}