A recent article by Simon Williams (Warwick) in the Royal Society of Arts magazine provides an informative overview of the emergence of sleep as a matter of political concern in recent years. The article, entitled 'Counting Sleep', includes some startling number-crunching: in North America there are now over 1000 accredited sleep clinics; the market for sleep aids is worth some $30bn in the U.S. alone; more than 1.5 billion cups of coffee are consumed worldwide every day; 12% of Britons get by on fewer than six hours' sleep per night. 'The simplest lesson sleep teaches us', Williams concludes, '[is] that our bodies tick to a different clock from that of contemporary capitalism'.
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