One doesn't have to be a cultural anthropologist to view alcohol as a normal
part of society.  Having grown up in a hard-drinking part of upstate New York,
attended college at big-partying liberal arts school, and pursued graduate work
at UNC-Chapel Hill, I was not even aware that alcohol could be considered a
"foreign and pernicious agent" until I began studying the temperance movement
as part of my research on 19th century popular culture.  Now that I'm teaching
at a university where the campus parties start on Wednesday and continue
through Friday when students go home for the weekend, I have severe doubts that
I am the only one who thinks this way.

Since learning about temperance movements, it has always struck me that
temperance organizations are much more marginal to the dominant forms of
self-understanding in societies like the U. S. than alcohol.  Speculating for a
moment, part of this marginality might be because temperance organizations like
the Washingtonian societies were seeking to convince mainstream culture that
something that most people perceived as "normal" and "good" was actually
strange and dangerous.  In lit crit language, temperance organizations often
seek to convince people that something they viewed as "self" was actually
"other."

Quoting Maria Swora <[log in to unmask]>:

> Ron,
>
> Speaking as a sociocultural anthropologist and an MPH, I can sum up the
> difference this way.  Public health, while not medicine, is aligned with
> medicine and therefore is very interventionist.  Cultural anthropology is NOT
> interventionist, and as Heath himself wrote, likes to position itself as a
> "gadfly" annoyingly questioning everyone's  presuppostions.  I think that has
> lessened in recent years as anthropology has moved away from structuralism,
> and is in some kind of post-poststructuralist period.  Does sociology have
> such theoretical fads?  I find myself rolling my eyes at the table of
> contents of many anthropology journals.  By the way, I've published five
> papers, and only one in an Anthropology journal.  The rest are in
> multidisciplinary journals like Narrative Inquiry, and Mental Health,
> Religion, and Culture.
>
> My greatest interest is in the anthropology of religion and spirituality.
>
> Nazdrowia
>
> Maria
>
> Ron Roizen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> David: The tendency for cultural anthropology to view alcohol as a normal
> and interesting functional part of a cultural system and for public health
> to view it, instead, as a foreign and pernicious agent is a longstanding
> strain in social science perspectives on alcohol. The memorable place in
> the literature where the public health (problem maximizers) perspective
> duked it out with the anthropological (problem minimizers) perspective was
> an exchange between Robin R. and Dwight Heath:
>
> 1. Room, R., "Alcohol and Ethnography: A Case of Problem Deflation,"
> Current Anthropology 25:169-178, 1984 -- which is available at
> http://www.bks.no/room.htm.
>
> 2. Heath, D B 1984 Reply to Room. Current Anthropology 25(2):180-181.
>
> Robin made frequent reference to Heath's work in his paper.
>
> Ron
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alcohol and Drugs History Society [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of David Fahey
> Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2005 9:31 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: what can alcohol/drug historians learn from the social
> sciences?
>
> Dan's point about gambling research reminds me that most of us--social
> scientists and others--study drinking, drugs, or whatever as a
> social/medical/legal PROBLEM. For certain disciplines--maybe anthropology
> is an appropriate example--drinking, drugs, or whatever may be studied as
> part of NORMAL life and not as a problem. Some scholars, for instance,
> study alcoholic drink as part of historical research on food or of leisure
> behavior or of social ritual or of business enterprise.
>
> David Fahey
>
> At 09:30 AM 3/29/2005, you wrote:
> >Not that I can answer for social sciences, but I convened a group here at
> >Brock of "addiction" scholars--a couple psychologists, a sociologist,
> >and few others--and have found this tremendously useful for my own work
> >and perspectives. Especially in the area of different conceptions of
> >addiction, and also in research methodology. Also, about half of these
> >scholars research gambling, so the issues we deal with converge and diverge
> >in very interesting and useful ways.
> >
> >Dan Malleck
> >
> >At 06:59 PM 3/28/2005, you wrote:
> >>I benefited greatly from the responses to my last question, so I feel
> >>emboldened to ask a broader and more controversial question: what can
> >>alcohol/drug historians learn from the social sciences? The old, sad
> >>joke is that historians are a generation or two out of date in their
> >>borrowings from the social sciences. What do ADHS social scientists
> >>think? What would they recommend historians read?
> >
> >Dan Malleck, PhD
> >Assistant Professor, Community Health Sciences
> >Brock University
> >500 Glenridge Ave
> >St. Catharines, Ontario
> >L2S 3A1
> >905 688-5550 ext 5108
>
>
> Maria G. Swora, Ph.D. MPH
> Department of Sociology
> Benedictine College
> Atchison, Kansas 66002
>
> Don't believe everything you think.
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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