UNIT 2: Deviance, Stigma and Intoxication (Angus Bancroft)
“For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan (1797/8).
“Had the government deprived Coleridge of opium, he might have been happier. Then again, there might have been no ‘Kubla Khan’.” The Economist (2006).
This unit will use the issue of drug use and intoxication to examine the key sociological concepts of deviance, stigma, distinction, medicalisation and the construction of public problems.
General reading for this unit:
Bancroft, Angus (2009) Drugs, Intoxication and Society, Cambridge: Polity.
Barton, Adrian (2003) Illicit Drugs: Use and Control, London: Routledge.
Young, Jock (1971), The Drugtakers: The Social Meaning of Drug Use. This is rather dated but its perspective still holds.
Most readings are online. Some are on WebCT, others can be accessed through the Library catalogue. To do this, search under the journal title (e.g. ‘International Journal of Drug Policy’) and follow the link to the electronic version of the journal.
Friday 30/01/09: Selfish Brains, Mindless Bodies – Drug Use, Deviance and Pleasure
This lecture introduces the sociological concept of ‘deviance’ as it relates to drug use. It examines the kinds of explanations that have been offered for illicit drug use – frequently, that users are unhappy, damaged, desperate or in some way pathological – and introduces a much neglected explanation, that most drug users enjoy using drugs.
Readings:
Becker, Howard (1963) Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, New York: Free Press. Chapter 8 (WebCT).
Duff, Cameron. (2008) “The pleasure in context,” International Journal of Drug Policy, 19:384-392 (Online through Library Catalogue).
Erikson, Kai (1962) ‘Notes on the Sociology of Deviance’, Social Problems, 9, 4, 307-314. (Online at JSTOR).
Hunt, Geoffrey P., and Kristin Evans (2008) “‘The great unmentionable’: Exploring the pleasures and benefits of ecstasy from the perspectives of drug users,” Drugs: education, prevention and policy 15:329 (Online).
Young, Jock (1971), The Drugtakers: The Social Meaning of Drug Use, Chapter 5, ‘Social Reaction against drugtaking’ (WebCT).
Reinarman, C. and Levine, H. (1997) ‘Crack in Context’ and ‘The Crack Attack’, Chapters 1 and 2, in Reinarman, C and Levine, H (eds) Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice, Berkeley, University of California.
Week 4 Tuesday 03/02/09: Burning Love – Smoking, Status and Social Stigma
A ‘stigma’ is a quality a person has or is given which diminishes them in the eyes of others – a mark of being less than human. This lecture looks at smoking in these terms. Smoking has gone through an extraordinary transformation since the 1970s, from a high-status habit to a low-status addiction. Why and how this happened is the subject of this lecture.
Readings:
Farrimond, H. and Joffe, H. (2006) “Pollution, Peril and Poverty: A British Study of the Stigmatization of Smokers”, Journal of Community and Applied Psychology, 16: 481-491 (Online).
Goffman, Erving (1968) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, London: Penguin. Chapter 1, ‘Stigma and Social Identity’, pp 11-54 (WebCT).
Stuber, J et al (2008) “Smoking and the emergence of a stigmatized social status”, Social Science & Medicine, 67: 420-430 (Online).
Friday 06/02/09: Discriminating Tastes - Intoxication and Distinction
‘Taste’ is the ability to discriminate between sensations. Sociologically, taste is the ability to demonstrate one’s own worth in society by selecting between sensations. This lecture examines the ways in which alcohol and other drugs have played an important part in taste.
Readings:
Bourdieu, P. (1979) Distinction, London: Routledge. Pp 365-371 (WebCT).
Gusfield, J. R. (1987) 'Passage to Play: Rituals of Drinking Time in American Society', Chapter 3 in M. Douglas (ed) Constructive Drinking: Perspectives on Drink from Anthropology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (WebCT).
Mandelbaum, David G. (1965), “Alcohol and Culture”, Current Anthropology, 6, 3, 281-293 (Online).
Mars, Gerald (1987) “Longshore Drinking, Economic Security and Union Politics in Newfoundland,” Chapter 4 in Douglas, M. (ed) Constructive Drinking: Perspectives from Anthropology, Cambridge University Press (WebCT).
Paton-Simpson, Grant (2001) “Social Obligatory Drinking: A Sociological Analysis of Norms Governing Minimum Drinking Levels”, Contemporary Drug Problems 28: 133-177 (Online).
Schivelbush, Wolfgang (1993), Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants and Intoxicants, New York: Vintage. Chapter 6: Rituals.
Scruton, R. (2007), 'The Philosophy of Wine', in Robinson, J. and Smith, B.C. (eds.), Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine, Oxford, Signal Books (WebCT).
Week 5 Tuesday 10/02/09: Remote Control for the Soul - Addiction and Medicalisation
This lecture examines ‘medicalisation’, the process of dealing with personal troubles as if they were medical problems. Addiction is a relevant example here, as more and more behaviours – shopping, gambling, internet use - are coming to be defined in terms of addiction.
Readings:
Levine, Harry (1978) “The Discovery of Addiction: Changing Conceptions of Habitual Drunkenness in America”, Journal of Studies on Alcohol 39(1): 143-174 (WebCT).
Lindesmith, Alfred (1938), “A Sociological Theory of Drug Addiction”, The American Journal of Sociology, 43, 593-613 (Online).
Roth, M. (2004), “The Golden Age of Drinking and the Fall into Addiction”, Janus Head, 7, 1, 11-33 (Online).
Sullum, J. (2003) ‘H: The surprising truth about heroin and addiction,’ Reason, http://www.reason.com/news/show/28809.html.
Friday 13/02/09: Incriminating Habits - The Creation of the ‘Drug Problem’
“It may be argued that the entire rise of the West, from 1500 to 1900, depended on a series of drug trades.” C. A. Trocki, Opium, Empire, and the Global Political Economy (1999: xii)
A public problem is, somewhat tautologically, an issue that commands a public reaction. Governments tend to be good at banning the symptoms of problems (guns, knives, short-selling, drugs) rather than tackling their causes. This lecture looks at the history of drugs as a public problem, the War on Drugs, and how drugs have become chemical solutions to social problems.
Barton, Adrian (2003) Illicit Drugs: Use and Control, London: Routledge. See Chapter 2, “A Historical Overview of the Social Construction of the British Drug Problem” (WebCT).
Best, Joel (2008) Social Problems, New York, WW Norton. Chapter 2, ‘Claims,’ pp 29-63.
Dingelstad, David; Gosden, Richard; Martin, Brian and Vakas, Nickolas. (1996), 'The social construction of drug debates', Social Science & Medicine, 43, 12, 1829 (Online).
Gusfield, Joseph (1981), The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking-Driving and the Symbolic Order, University of Chicago. Chapter 8, ‘The Perspective of Sociological Irony’.
Gusfield, Joseph (1996) Contested Meanings: The Construction of Alcohol Problems, Madison: University of Wisconsin. Chapter 2: ‘Contested Meanings and the Cultural Authority of Social Problems’ (WebCT).
Walton, Stuart (2002) Out of it: A Cultural History of Intoxication, New York: Harmony. Chapter 4, ‘From Gin Lane to Crack City’.
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