5 August 1995
 
Joe:  Many thanks for your comments and kind words on my
7-steps-to-nowhere-in-particular mini-essay.  Some reactions:
 
1.  Yes, MacAndrew's 1969 "On the Notion that..." essay has been one of
my most favorite ones--It's a beauty!  And yet MacAndrew offers another
of those "Which one do I believe?" alcohol-scholar dilemmas.  Yes,
_Drunken Comportment_ and his wonderful piece on drunkenness as an
explanation of conduct fit in nicely with the sociological perspective
offered in "On the Notion," but what the heck are we to make of
MacAndrew's various efforts to build an alcoholism scale, sanctified by
factor analysis, and even graced in the literature with his name--as
(gasp!)"the MacAndrew Scale"?
 
2.  Though I haven't re-read it lately, I must confess to never
particularly getting much out of Schneider's _Social Problems_ article.
Although it offered a title that suggested a social constructionist
perspective on the disease concept, its actual text was not really much
different from the movement's own perspective on "the accomplishment"
represented by the putative ascendancy of the disease concept. There
are two decidedly different connotations to the term "social
accomplishment," here, and that paper seemed to drift unnoticedly over
into the "other" one IMHO.  Also, Scheider's history, as I recall,
wasn't all that good.  Not to say I haven't cited it when it wasn't
convenient!--Which is perhaps also a measure of how empty of good
studies this otherwise prime sociological territory really is.
 
3.  I'm already looking forward to _Contested Meanings: The
Construction of Alcohol Problems_ (Feb., 1996, U Wisconsin Press) and
glad it takes up "head-on" the sociology of the sociology of alcohol
"head-on" therein.  (Plug:  PLEASE be so kind as to tell the publisher
to send SHAR a review copy.)
 
4.  You raise an important point in the question of the "depth" of the
U.S. public's acceptance of the disease concept.  How to check that
empirically is the tough question.  But, yes, there's been too much
reliance on the seemingly superficial (or potentially superficial)
assent evidenced in a whole string of survey studies.
 
5.  Couldn't agree more on the distracting influences of "soft" money
and the premium on a crude, quantitative scientism in the field.
Yet--and on the other hand--a lot of us wouldn't have wandered into
this field at all except for those inducements.  This is a big,
interesting, and important area and deserves a lot more attention.  One
of these days a real "history and sociology of alcohol science" is
going to accelerate down the runway and lumber into the air--and from
its new bird's-eye view offer us a whole new perspective on a wider
social history and sociology of alcohol and society.
 
Now, it being Saturday morn, I'm off to the Home Depot for some kitchen
tiles!
 
Yours, Ron
 
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