Consumerism, violence and drug use: the risks of neoliberalism

Abstract

This paper analyses the violence and drug use associated, together with other aspects, with the effects of the consumerism inherent to neoliberalism, which has major consequences on the subjective conditions of social ties. Neoliberalism is considered as a new inequitable economic system, inherited from old capitalism. The data used for the analysis of the topic was collected during a research project on Criminality and urban space: The transversalities of violence (2004), in which prisoners in Novo Hamburgo and São Leopoldo were interviewed, both individually and through group discussions, using a transdisciplinary research perspective. The weakening of the human interactions of those affected by desymbolization is an evidence of the effects of the neoliberal context on subjectivities. Key words: consumerism, psychoanalysis, violence, neoliberalism.