Drug Use and Cultural Contexts 'beyond the West'
Drug Use and Cultural Contexts 'beyond the West'

Author: Ross Coomber

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13:

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Considerable research, policy and media attention has focused recently on drug use in Britain, wider Europe, the US and other advanced "western" societies such as Australia and Canada. However, the place of drugs in other cultural contexts has received far less attention. Little is known about the use of drugs in non-western societies and this lack of comparative knowledge hinders a broader understanding of drug use, the way problems are attached to it and the nature of inappropriately applied social and regulatory policies. This book examines drug use (including alcohol) in different cultural contexts, showing how the claim of tradition can persist even while the impetus toward change is pervasive. In some cases, change is strongly resisted; in others its effects are profound and potentially highly destructive. In a world of globalization, western investment and leisure tourism can combine with the profiteering of international drug trafficking to transform traditional patterns of intoxicant use; in a world of post-colonialism, the legacies of past impositions are still causing tragedies; and in a world of western-led drug control policies, unproblematic cultural incorporation of drug use into everyday life and sacred ritual is threatened by remote and ill-informed politicians and bureaucracies. This book will be of interest to academics, students and receptive policy audiences interested in understanding drugs and the issues raised by their use in unfamiliar contexts.

Key Concepts in Drugs and Society
Key Concepts in Drugs and Society

Author: Ross Coomber

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2013-04-29

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1446281574

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′This is a great resource that reflects the huge expertise of the authors. It will be welcomed by students, researchers and indeed anyone wanting critical but comprehensive coverage of key issues and trends concerning drugs and society - locally and globally, historically and today.′ - Nigel South, Professor of Sociology, University of Essex ′Provides informative, balanced and contextualized insights into the relationships between people and drugs. Whatever your background and however knowledgeable you feel you are about contemporary drug issues, I guarantee that you will learn something unexpected and new from this valuable text.′ - Joanne Neale, Professor of Public Health, Oxford Brookes University Why do people take drugs? How do we understand moral panics? What is the relationship between drugs and violence? How do people′s social positions influence their involvement in drug use? Insightful and illuminating, this book discusses drugs in social contexts. The authors bring together their different theoretical and practical backgrounds, offering a comprehensive and interdisciplinary introduction that opens up a wide scientific understanding moving beyond cultural myths and presuppositions. This is an invaluable reference source for students on criminology, sociology and social sciences programmes, as well as drug service practitioners such as drug workers, social workers and specialist nurses.

Drugs and Culture
Drugs and Culture

Author: Geoffrey Hunt

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-13

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 1317147731

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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 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 USA, the Middle East and Hong Kong.

Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders
Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2016-09-03

Total Pages: 171

ISBN-13: 0309439124

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Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.

The SAGE Handbook of Social Anthropology
The SAGE Handbook of Social Anthropology

Author: Richard Fardon

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2012-07-25

Total Pages: 1186

ISBN-13: 144626601X

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In two volumes, the SAGE Handbook of Social Anthropology provides the definitive overview of contemporary research in the discipline. It explains the what, where, and how of current and anticipated work in Social Anthropology. With 80 authors, contributing more than 60 chapters, this is the most comprehensive and up-to-date statement of research in Social Anthropology available and the essential point of departure for future projects. The Handbook is divided into four sections: -Part I: Interfaces examines Social Anthropology′s disciplinary connections, from Art and Literature to Politics and Economics, from Linguistics to Biomedicine, from History to Media Studies. -Part II: Places examines place, region, culture, and history, from regional, area studies to a globalized world -Part III: Methods examines issues of method; from archives to war zones, from development projects to art objects, and from ethics to comparison -Part IV: Futures anticipates anthropologies to come: in the Brain Sciences; in post-Development; in the Body and Health; and in new Technologies and Materialities Edited by the leading figures in social anthropology, the Handbook includes a substantive introduction by Richard Fardon, a think piece by Jean and John Comaroff, and a concluding last word on futures by Marilyn Strathern. The authors - each at the leading edge of the discipline - contribute in-depth chapters on both the foundational ideas and the latest research. Comprehensive and detailed, this magisterial Handbook overviews the last 25 years of the social anthropological imagination. It will speak to scholars in Social Anthropology and its many related disciplines.

Drug Effects
Drug Effects

Author: Lisa Gezon

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-06-16

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 131543007X

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Khat, marijuana, peyote—are these dangerous drugs or vilified plants with rich cultural and medical values? In this book, Lisa Gezon brings the drug debate into the 21st century, proposing criteria for evaluating psychotropic substances. Focusing on khat, whose bushy leaves are an increasingly popular stimulant and the target of vehement anti-drug campaigns, she explores biocultural and socioeconomic contexts on local, national, and global levels. Gezon provides a multidisciplinary examination of the plant’s direct physical and psychological effects, as well as indirect social and structural effects on income and labor productivity, identity, gendered relationships, global drug discourses, and food security. This sophisticated, multi-leveled analysis cuts through the traditional battle lines of the drug debate and is a model for understanding and evaluating psychotropic substances around the world.

Comprehending Drug Use
Comprehending Drug Use

Author: J. Bryan Page

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0813548039

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This book examines drug ethnography--methodology that involves access to the hidden world of drug users, the social spaces they frequent, and the larger structural forces that help construct their worlds. It explores the intersections of drug ethnography with globalization, criminalization, public health (including the HIV/AIDS epidemic, hepatitis, and other diseases), and gender, and also provide a guide to the methods and career paths of ethnographers.

Revisioning Women and Drug Use
Revisioning Women and Drug Use

Author: E. Ettorre

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2007-09-12

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 0230596843

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This 'landmark' text by one of the most respected researchers in drug use considers the issues surrounding the gendering of drug use, and within this looks critically at two approaches - the classical and postmodern. Ettorre examines the idea of a drug-using society and the implications this holds for social inequality and exclusion.

The Drug Effect
The Drug Effect

Author: Suzanne Fraser

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-09-05

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1139503839

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The Drug Effect: Health, Crime and Society offers new perspectives on critical debates in the field of alcohol and other drug use. Drawing together work by respected scholars in Australia, the US, the UK and Canada, it explores social and cultural meanings of drug use and analyses law enforcement and public health frameworks and objectives related to drug policy and service provision. In doing so, it addresses key questions of drug use and addiction through interdisciplinary, predominantly sociological and criminological, perspectives, mapping and building on recent conceptual and empirical advances in the field. These include questions of materiality and agency, the social constitution of disease and neo-liberal subjectivity and responsibility. This book provides a fresh scholarly perspective on drug use and addiction by collecting top quality original work, written by a mix of international leaders in the field and emerging scholars working at the cutting edge of research.

Friendly Business
Friendly Business

Author: Bernd Werse

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-06-16

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 3658103299

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Based on social research conducted in different countries in Europe, the U.S. and Australia, this anthology is the first to provide detailed insights into small-scale drug distribution. A main focus is the phenomenon of ‘social supply’, i.e. buying illicit drugs from friends, which covers a substantial part of the retail market. For cannabis users, cultivating their own plants is another important source. This volume deals with different social aspects of these non-profit-oriented forms of drug distribution, as well as profit-oriented small-scale dealing. While the illicit drug trade is commonly referred to as a world dominated by ruthless criminals, this book draws a different picture.