Summary Of Matthew Wolf Meyer's The Slumbering Masses

Matthew Wolf Meyer’s Book, The Slumbering Masses, strongly demonstrates our society's dependence on capitalism and the need to conform to societal norms by using examples from sleep clinics and pharmaceutical trade shows that take place throughout the United States. Before American industrialization, most Americans were exposed to a variety of sleeping schedules, such as the biphasic sleep and midday naps that promote productivity in the workday. However, due to the strong promotion of capitalism and modern practices most Americans have started to adapt to capitalistic sleeping rhythms. These rhymes are reflected in the normative sleep pattern consisting of eight consecutive hours of sleep per night. This is significant to medical anthropologists …show more content…
Wolf-Meyer’s overarching argument about sleep has become an important facet in which behavior is defined as “normal” or “disorderly” and policed. The idea of “normal” sleep emerged with the invention of statistics in the 19th century; but the need to control the sleep-wake cycle has been something of a constant in American culture. The Slumbering Masses also elaborates on the aggressive interventions of the pharmaceutical industry into the pathologization of sleep. Wolf-Meyer is especially effective in explaining the pharmaceuticalization of sleep. The current trend in the United States, reflects that the people are constantly finding themselves caught between their sleep disorders and their social obligations. But then, we understand that a patient, diagnosed with a disorder, is also demanded to treat it, in order to adjust to the social order. In any case, Americans often rely on medicine and feel that they are responsible to sleep the normative pattern of consolidated nocturnal sleep and to stay awake (and alert) to adjust to social activities. (P.477) Thus allowing for Americans to become deeply embedded in the pharmaceutical