Search Results for addiction

... Mainstream addiction science is today widely marked by an antinomy between a neurologically determinist understanding of the human brain and a liberal voluntarist conception of drug use as a free exercise of choice. Defenders of both discourses strive, but ultimately do not fully succeed...

... The core criterion of addiction is the loss of self-control. Ironically enough, however, neither the social nor the biomedical sciences of addiction have so far made any measurable headway in linking drug use to a loss of self-control. Whereas the social sciences have variously reduced addicted...

... Chapter 1 provides a critical survey of sociological research on addiction. It begins with the seminal research of Alfred Lindesmith on heroin addiction and then proceeds through discussions of functionalist contributions, research that exemplifies what David Matza called the “appreciative” turn...

... The evolution of Alfred Lindesmith’s classic theory of addiction is analyzed as a product of the particular intellectual currents and controversies in and for which it was developed. These include the conflicts that pitted qualitative against quantitative sociology; the fledgling discipline...

... Chapter 4 demonstrates and explains endogenous accounts of an ecology of addiction in drug abuse treatment discourse. These accounts posit a space “out there” marked by its degradation, dirtiness, solitude, and savagery that commonly tempts those who must live there to also behave amorally...

... Chapter 5 considers three problems that have arisen from efforts to interpret addiction as a form of akrasia and/or weakness of the will. The first problem is that this thesis too often posits the rational unity of healthy self-control. However, healthy people exhibit varying degrees of rational...

... Chapter 6 argues that while social contexts have long been understood to play an important role in addiction and recovery, the mechanisms through which contexts are currently said to influence addictive behavior are invariably cast either as mere cues, “secondary reinforcers,” or as diverse...