Current approaches to drugs tend to be determined by medical and criminal visions that emerged over a century ago; the concepts of addiction, on the one hand, and drug control on the other, having imposed themselves as the unquestionable central notions surrounding drug issues and discourses. Pathologization and criminalization are the dominant perspectives on psychoactive drugs, and it is difficult to describe drug consumption in any terms other than those of medicine or, or to conceive of regulation except in terms of control and eradication. "Drugs and Culture" presents other voices and understandings of drug issues, highlighting the socio-cultural features of drug use and regulation in modern societies. It examines the cultural dimensions of drugs and their regulation, with special attention to questions of how consumption of specific psychoactive substances becomes associated with particular social groups; the social dynamics involved in our coming to think of these phenomena as we do; and, the factors that determine the political and policy responses to drug use. Adopting approaches from anthropology, sociology, history, political science and geopolitics to challenge the prevailing pathologization and criminalization of drug use, this book provides international and comparative perspectives on drug research, based on the latest research in Europe, The United States, The Middle East and Hong Kong.
| ISBN | 1409405435 | | DEWEY edition | DC22 | | ISBN13 | 9781409405436
(What's this?) | | Pages | 288 | | Publisher | Ashgate Publishing Group | | Published in | Aldershot | | Imprint | Ashgate Publishing Limited | | Height (mm) | 234 | | Format | Hardback | | Width (mm) | 156 | | Publication date | 09 May 2011 | | Academic level | Professional / Scholarly | | DEWEY | 306.1 | |
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Introduction: drugs and culture, Maitena Milhet, Molly Moloney, Henri Bergeron and Geoffrey Hunt; Section I Knowledge: Science, Medicine, and Discourses on Drugs: Social fear, drug related beliefs, and drug policy, Ross Coomber; Blinding ourselves with science: the chronic infections of our thinking on psychoactive substances, Tom Decorte; Epidemiology as a model: processing data through a black box?, Patrick Peretti-Watel; Opiate addiction: a revival of medical involvement, Peter Conrad and Thomas Mackie; This is not medicalization, Didier Fassin; Drugs: a sociological blind spot? A look at the French experience, Michel Kokoreff.; Section II Consumption: Cultures of Drug Use: Drug consumption: a social ritual? The examples of tobacco and cocaine, Randall Collins; Dance drug scenes: a global perspective, Geoffrey Hunt, Karen Joe-Laidler, Molly Moloney, Agnes van der Poel and Dike van de Mheen; Contemporary use of natural hallucinogens: from techno subculture to mainstream values, Maitena Milhet and Catherine Reynaud-Maurupt; Ecstasy, gender, and accountability in a rave culture, Molly Moloney and Geoffrey Hunt; Drug use in Europe: specific national characteristics or shared models?, Frank Zobel and Wolfgang Gotz.; Section III Policy or Politics? The Cultural Dyamics of Public Responses: Modernity and anti-modernity: drug policy and political culture in the United States and Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, David T. Courtwright and Timothy A. Hickman; Assessing global drug problems, policies, and reform proposals, Peter Reuter; Homelessness, addiction, and suffering in the US war on drugs, Philippe Bourgois; Knowledge and policies to reduce drug supply in France: some misunderstandings, Nacer Ialam and Laurent Laniel; The culture of drug policy, Henri Bergeron; Index.
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