Suchergebnisse

Traces the origins & the organizational logic of Alcoholics Anonymous & the proliferation of its ideology through non-drug-related 12-step groups. The resonance of the 12-step ideology is explained as a consequence of the collapse of traditional communities & cosmologies that has left individuals without sustaining cultures or stable identities to help regulate their desire. This collapse is registered by the conflict between the need for self-control & the increasing incentives for indulgence offered by the culture of mass consumption. The notion of addiction is interpreted as a convenient catch-all phrase that identifies all manners of human troubles from within the 12-step ideology. It is concluded that 12-step groups have become a sort of kinship network that lends meaning to individuals from far-flung, fragmented families & provides a buffer against the churning currents of postmodern society. D. M. Smith

Because there is no necessary relationship between the presence of drug problems and the enactment of drug controls, and because there is a relationship between controls and subsequent problems, policy patterns are a phenomena deserving study in their own right. The emergence of a political perspective which attempts this is reviewed and some of its theoretical difficulties noted. A framework is then sketched which employs theories of the capitalist state. The paper suggests that patterns in drug control policies cannot be understood apart from the general contradictory contraints within which the state must work, nor apart from the autonomy required to do so.