The Slumbering Masses

Sleep, Medicine, and Modern American Life

Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

312 Seiten

2016
University of Minnesota Press (Verlag)
9780816674756 (ISBN)

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Americans spend billions of dollars every year on drugs, therapy, and other remedies trying to get a good night’s sleep. Anxieties about not getting enough sleep and the impact of sleeplessness on productivity, health, and happiness pervade medical opinion, the workplace, and popular culture. In The Slumbering Masses, Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer addresses the phenomenon of sleep and sleeplessness in the United States, tracing the influence of medicine and industrial capitalism on the sleeping habits of Americans from the nineteenth century to the present.

Before the introduction of factory shift work, Americans enjoyed a range of sleeping practices, most commonly two nightly periods of rest supplemented by daytime naps. The new sleeping regimen-eight uninterrupted hours of sleep at night-led to the pathologization of other ways of sleeping. Arguing that the current model of sleep is rooted not in biology but in industrial capitalism’s relentless need for productivity, The Slumbering Masses examines so-called Z-drugs that promote sleep, the use of both legal and illicit stimulants to combat sleepiness, and the contemporary politics of time. Wolf-Meyer concludes by exploring the extremes of sleep, from cases of perpetual sleeplessness and the use of the sleepwalking defense in criminal courts to military experiments with ultra-short periods of sleep.

Drawing on untapped archival sources and long-term ethnographic research with people who both experience and treat sleep abnormalities, Wolf-Meyer analyzes and sharply critiques how sleep and its supposed disorders are understood and treated. By recognizing the variety and limits of sleep, he contends, we can establish more flexible expectations about sleep and, ultimately, subvert the damage of sleep pathology and industrial control on our lives.

Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer is associate professor of anthropology at Binghamton University.

Contents

Abbreviations

Preface: Sleep at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century

Introduction: From the Lone Sleeper to the Slumbering Masses

Part I. Sleeping, Past and Present

1. The Rise of American Sleep Medicine: Diagnosing (and Misdiagnosing) Sleep

2. The Protestant Origins of American Sleep

3. Sleeping and Not Sleeping in the Clinic: How Medicine Is Remaking Biology

and Society

Part II. Cultures of Sleep

4. Desiring a Good Night’s Sleep: Order and Disorder in Everyday Life

5. Before We Fall Asleep: Children’s Sleep and the Rise of the Solitary Sleeper

6. Pharmaceuticals and the Making of Modern Bodies and Rhythms

7. Early to Rise: Creating Well-Rested American Workers

8. Chemical Consciousness

9. Sleeping on the Job: From Siestas to Workplace Naps

10. Take Back Your Time: Activism and Overworked Americans

Part III. The Limits of Sleep

11. Unconsciousness Criminality: Sleepwalking Murders, Drowsy Driving,

and the Vigilance of the Law

12. The Extremes of Sleep: War, Sports, and Science

Conclusion: The Futures of Sleep

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Reihe/Serie	A Quadrant Book
Zusatzinfo	3
Verlagsort	Minnesota
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Lebenshilfe / Lebensführung
	Medizin / Pharmazie ► Gesundheitswesen
	Naturwissenschaften
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-13	9780816674756 / 9780816674756
Zustand	Neuware