Social science addiction research

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Social science addiction research (or social science drug research ) is a special sociology as a sub-area of ​​the sociology of deviant behavior . Her topic is the social construction of drug problems or the social reaction to them.

One of the founders of social science research on addiction is Howard S. Becker , who told you in his crime- sociological classic “Outsiders. Studies in the Sociology of Deviance ” (1963) devotes two chapters:“ How to become a marijuana user ”and“ Marijuana use and social control ”. In the German-speaking world, too, social science research on addiction is predominantly carried out by criminologists, particularly Lorenz Böllinger , Henner Hess , Stephan Quensel and Sebastian Scheerer . Heino Stöver and Gundula Barsch , among others, work as addiction researchers in the field of social work science. The well-known German-speaking social science addiction researchers also include Irmgard Vogt and Günter Amendt .

Critical addiction researchers, mostly with a social science background, have come together in the Schildower Circle .

Main topics of social science addiction research

Reflection of the disease concept

Based on the fact that intoxicants have always existed in human history, whereas addiction has only been mentioned for 200 years, the "invention of addiction" and in particular its characterization as a disease is described as a social construction. According to Scheerer, speaking against the disease character of addiction

  • the undetectability of biological-somatic causes;
  • the fact that addiction is not an individual but a thoroughly social occurrence;
  • the need for specific medical treatment beyond physical withdrawal;
  • the negative consequences of pathologizing the affected person in the sense of a self-fulfilling prophecy (“lifelong”, “progressive character of the disease”).

As an alternative to the concept of illness, addiction is viewed by representatives of the nondisease approach , such as the American psychologist Stanton Peele , as a “ground-in reaction” to certain life problems that guarantees special emotional rewards at a high price. This line of argument is also followed by Peter Degkwitz, who describes addiction as “excessive attachment to certain experiences”, emphasizing that people do not become dependent on substances (or processes such as gambling ) but on their effects.

The American sociologist Alfred Ray Lindesmith had already observed in the 1940s that "drug addicts" only become addicted through interaction with other addicts, because they learn from one another that withdrawal is almost impossible. Where this social definition of addiction is missing, such as in people who have been given opiates for medical reasons, discontinuing the drug is much less problematic.

Analysis of drug panics

Under a drug panic social science researchers understand addiction by moral entrepreneurs attributed dangers of certain drugs that are sensationalized media and often lead to reactions of governments and legislators. A drug panic is one of the moral panics thematized in criminal sociology that generate deviance. Craig Reinarman names four drug panics in recent US history as examples :

  • the first and most significant drug panic arose in the 19th century in connection with drinking alcohol and found its formal end with prohibition in 1919 ;
  • Also in the 19th century a drug panic against the "Mongolian vice", the smoking of opium , was kindled, which was in 1875 with the "Anti-Opium Den Ordinance" of San Francisco and in 1914 with the "Harrison Narcotic Act", the first nationwide anti -Drug Law, ended;
  • during the Great Depression , a drug panic in relation to the "killer weed" was marijuana staged in 1937 led to the ban of the substance;
  • From 1986 onwards, a crack panic was stirred up.

According to Reinarman, all these drug panics have in common that they applied to substances that were in circulation and consumed long before (in the case of alcohol during the entire history of mankind), only the group of publicly perceived users had changed. The alcohol panic was fueled as the working class of Catholic emigrants filled the cities. They faced an abstinence movement from members of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants . The opium panic was directed against Chinese immigrants; the marijuana panic was directed against Mexican Americans. Crack consumption was only scandalized when freebase cocaine was sold in cheap portions on the street corners of the ghettos . Cocaine use had quadrupled in the USA before the crack panic, which had no media response. In the decades before the drug panic, marijuana use as "hemp" smoking was widespread and inconspicuous in the lower classes of all ethnic groups and affordable custom. Opium products were legal to buy without a prescription before the campaign.

Günter Amendt describes similar campaigns in the Federal Republic of Germany using the example of cannabis and comments: “In a world in which drugs have long since become a natural part of everyday life for all walks of life, one will wonder how it was possible that they of all people most harmless of all psychoactive substances could be demonized in this way. "

literature

Books

Essays, lectures

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schildower Kreis
  2. ↑ Frank Nolte: "Addiction" - On the history of an idea , in: Bernd Dollinger, Henning Schmidt-Semisch (ed.): Social sciences addiction research , Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag, pp. 47-58.
  3. ↑ Sebastian Scheerer: Sucht , Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1995, p. 86.
  4. ↑ Sebastian Scheerer: Sucht , Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1995, p. 86.
  5. ↑ Peter Degkwitz: Plea for a psychosocial understanding of addiction , in: Bernd Dollinger, Henning Schmidt-Semisch (Ed.): Sozialwissenschaftliche Suchtforschung , Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007, pp. 59–81, here p. 61.
  6. ^ Alfred R. Lindesmith: Opiate Addiction , Principia Press, Bloomington 1947.
  7. ↑ Craig Reinarman : The social construction of drug panics , in: Bernd Dollinger, Henning Schmidt-Semisch (Hrsg.): Sozialwissenschaftliche Suchtforschung , Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007, pp. 97–111.
  8. ↑ Craig Reinarman: The social construction of drug panics , in: Bernd Dollinger, Henning Schmidt-Semisch (ed.): Sozialwissenschaftliche Suchtforschung , Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007, p. 97–111, here p. 103 ff.
  9. ↑ There were already alcohol panics in Europe, especially the fight against the "booze devil" during the Reformation and the English gin epidemic in the 18th century, cf. Hasso Spode : The power of drunkenness , Leske & Budrich, Opladen 1993, pp. 62ff and 101ff.
  10. ^ Also: Günter Amendt, No drugs - no future. Drugs in the Age of Globalization , Frankfurt am Main, 2003, p. 77.
  11. ^ Günter Amendt, No drugs - no future. Drugs in the Age of Globalization , Frankfurt am Main, 2003, p. 77 f.