1932

Abstract

This review traces the literatures in cultural anthropology and neighboring disciplines that are focused on addiction as an object of knowledge and intervention, and as grounds for self-identification, sociality, and action. Highlighting the production of disease categories, the staging of therapeutic interventions, and the ongoing work of governance, this work examines addiction as a key site for the analysis of contemporary life. It likewise showcases a general movement toward accounts of addiction that foreground complexity, contingency, and multiplicity.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102214-014242
2015-10-21
2024-03-28
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/anthro/44/1/annurev-anthro-102214-014242.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102214-014242&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

Literature Cited

  1. Acker CJ. 2002. Creating the American Junkie: Addiction Research in the Classic Era of Narcotic Control Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press
  2. Agar M. 1973. Ripping and Running: A Formal Ethnography of Urban Heroin Addicts New York: Seminar Press
  3. Agar M, Bourgois P, French J, Murdoch O. 2001. Buprenorphine: ‘field trials’ of a new drug. Qual. Health Res. 11:169–84 [Google Scholar]
  4. Barad K. 2003. Posthumanist performativity: toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: J. Women Cult. Soc. 28:3801–31 [Google Scholar]
  5. Bartlett N, Garriott W, Raikhel E. 2014. What's in the “treatment gap”? Ethnographic perspectives on addiction and global mental health from China, Russia, and the United States. Med. Anthropol. 33:6457–77 [Google Scholar]
  6. Bateson G. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press
  7. Bell V. 2007. Online information, extreme communities and Internet therapy: Is the Internet good for our mental health?. J. Ment. Health 16:4445–57 [Google Scholar]
  8. Benson P. 2010. Safe cigarettes. Dialect. Anthropol. 34:149–56 [Google Scholar]
  9. Berridge V, Edwards G. 1982. Opium and the People: Opiate Use in Nineteenth-Century England London: St. Martin's Press
  10. Biehl J. 2010. Human pharmakon: symptoms, technologies, subjectivities. A Reader in Medical Anthropology: Theoretical Trajectories, Emergent Realities BJ Good, MMJ Fischer, SS Willen, M-J DelVecchio Good 213–31 Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell [Google Scholar]
  11. Borovoy A. 2005. The Too-Good Wife: Alcohol, Codependency, and the Politics of Nurturance in Postwar Japan Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
  12. Bourgois P. 1998. The moral economies of homeless heroin addicts: confronting ethnography, HIV risk, and everyday violence in San Francisco shooting encampments. Subst. Use Misuse 33:112323–51 [Google Scholar]
  13. Bourgois P. 2000. Disciplining addictions: the bio-politics of methadone and heroin in the United States. Cult. Med. Psychiatry 24:2165–95 [Google Scholar]
  14. Bourgois P. 2003. In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2nd ed..
  15. Bourgois P, Schonberg J. 2009. Righteous Dopefiend Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
  16. Boyer D. 2005. The corporeality of expertise. Ethnos 70:2243–66 [Google Scholar]
  17. Brandes SH. 2002. Staying Sober in Mexico City Austin: Univ. Tex. Press
  18. Browner CH. 1999. On the medicalization of medical anthropology. Med. Anthropol. Q. 13:2135–40 [Google Scholar]
  19. Buchman DZ, Illes J, Reiner PB. 2011. The paradox of addiction neuroscience. Neuroethics 4:265–77 [Google Scholar]
  20. Cain C. 1991. Personal stories: identity acquisition and self-understanding in Alcoholics Anonymous. Ethos 19:210–53 [Google Scholar]
  21. Campbell ND. 2007. Discovering Addiction: The Science and Politics of Substance Abuse Research Ann Arbor: Univ. Mich. Press
  22. Campbell ND. 2010. Toward a critical neuroscience of ‘addiction.’. BioSocieties 5:189–104 [Google Scholar]
  23. Campbell ND. 2011. The metapharmacology of the ‘addicted brain.’. Hist. Present 1:2194–218 [Google Scholar]
  24. Campbell ND. 2012. Medicalization and biomedicalization: Does the diseasing of addiction fit the frame?. Crit. Perspect. Addict. Adv. Med. Sociol. 14:3–25 [Google Scholar]
  25. Campbell ND, Shaw SJ. 2008. Incitements to discourse: illicit drugs, harm reduction, and the production of ethnographic subjects. Cult. Anthropol. 23:4688–717 [Google Scholar]
  26. Carr ES. 2010. Enactments of expertise. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 39:17–32 [Google Scholar]
  27. Carr ES. 2011. Scripting Addiction: The Politics of Therapeutic Talk and American Sobriety Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press
  28. Carr ES. 2013. Signs of sobriety: rescripting American addiction counseling. See Raikhel & Garriott 2013 160–87
  29. Carr ES, Smith Y. 2014. The poetics of therapeutic practice: motivational interviewing and the powers of pause. Cult. Med. Psychiatry 38:183–114 [Google Scholar]
  30. Choudhury S, Slaby J. 2012. Critical Neuroscience: A Handbook of the Social and Cultural Contexts of Neuroscience Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell
  31. Christensen PA. 2014. Japan, Alcoholism, and Masculinity: Suffering Sobriety in Tokyo. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books [Google Scholar]
  32. Conrad P, Mackie TI. 2011. Opiate addiction: a revival of medical involvement. See Hunt et al. 2011 71–84
  33. Courtwright DT. 2010. The NIDA brain disease paradigm: history, resistance and spinoffs. BioSocieties 5:1137–47 [Google Scholar]
  34. Crowley-Matoka M, True G. 2012. No one wants to be the candy man: ambivalent medicalization and clinician subjectivity in pain management. Cult. Anthropol. 27:4689–712 [Google Scholar]
  35. Dackis C, O'Brien C. 2005. Neurobiology of addiction: treatment and public policy ramifications. Nat. Neurosci. 8:111431–36 [Google Scholar]
  36. Derrida J. 1981. Plato's pharmacy. Dissemination B Johnson 61–171 Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press [Google Scholar]
  37. Dietler M. 2006. Alcohol: anthropological/archaeological perspectives. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 35:229–49 [Google Scholar]
  38. Downey G, Lende DH. 2012. Neuroanthropology and the encultured brain. See Lende & Downey 2012 23–66
  39. Duff C. 2011. Reassembling (social) contexts: new directions for a sociology of drugs. Int. J. Drug Policy 22:6404–6 [Google Scholar]
  40. Dunbar D, Kushner HI, Vrecko S. 2010. Drugs, addiction and society. BioSocieties 5:12–7 [Google Scholar]
  41. Elam M. 2014. How the brain disease paradigm remoralizes addictive behaviour. Sci. Cult. 24:11–19 [Google Scholar]
  42. Elliott LC, Ream GL, McGinsky E. 2012. Video game addiction: user perspectives. See Netherland 2012 225–43
  43. Fassin D. 2011. This is not medicalization. See Hunt et al. 2011 85–94
  44. Fitzgerald D, Callard F. 2015. Social science and neuroscience beyond interdisciplinarity: Experimental entanglements. Theory Cult. Soc. 32:13–32 [Google Scholar]
  45. Fraser S. 2013. Junk: overeating and obesity and the neuroscience of addiction. Addict. Res. Theory 21:6496–506 [Google Scholar]
  46. Fraser S, Moore D. 2011. The Drug Effect: Health, Crime and Society Melbourne, Aust: Cambridge Univ. Press
  47. Fraser S, Moore D, Keane H. 2014. Habits: Remaking Addiction Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
  48. Fraser S, Valentine K, Roberts C. 2009. Living drugs. Sci. Cult. 18:2123–31 [Google Scholar]
  49. Garcia A. 2010. The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession Along the Rio Grande Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
  50. Garriott WC. 2011. Policing Methamphetamine: Narcopolitics in Rural America New York: N. Y. Univ. Press
  51. Gomart E. 2002. Methadone: six effects in search of a substance. Soc. Stud. Sci. 32:193–135 [Google Scholar]
  52. Gomart E. 2004. Surprised by methadone: in praise of drug substitution treatment in a French clinic. Body Soc. 10:2–385 [Google Scholar]
  53. Gowan T. 2010. Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco Minneapolis: Univ. Minn. Press
  54. Granfield R, Reinarman C. 2015. Expanding Addiction: Critical Essays New York: Routledge
  55. Gusfield JR. 1986. Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement Champaign: Univ. Ill. Press
  56. Hacking I. 1986. Making up people. Reconstructing Individualism T Heller, M Sosna, D Wellbery 222–36 Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
  57. Hacking I. 2007. Kinds of people: moving targets. Proc. Br. Acad. 151:285–318 [Google Scholar]
  58. Hansen H. 2013. Pharmaceutical evangelism and spiritual capital: an American tale of two communities of addicted selves. See Raikhel & Garriott 2013 106–25
  59. Hansen H, Roberts SK. 2012. Two tiers of biomedicalization: methadone, buprenorphine, and the racial politics of addiction treatment. Adv. Med. Sociol. 14:79–102 [Google Scholar]
  60. Haraway DJ. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature New York: Routledge
  61. Heath DB. 1987. Anthropology and alcohol studies: current issues. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 16:99–120 [Google Scholar]
  62. Hunt G, Barker JC. 2001. Socio-cultural anthropology and alcohol and drug research: towards a unified theory. Soc. Sci. Med. 53:2165–88 [Google Scholar]
  63. Hunt G, Milhet M, Bergeron H. 2011. Drugs and Culture: Knowledge, Consumption, and Policy London: Ashgate
  64. Hyde ST. 2011. Migrations in humanistic therapy: turning drug users into patients and patients into healthy citizens in Southwest China. Body Soc. 17:2–3183–204 [Google Scholar]
  65. Jellinek EM. 1960. The disease concept of alcoholism. New Haven 343:63 [Google Scholar]
  66. Kaye K. 2012. De-medicalizing addiction: toward biocultural understandings. Adv. Med. Sociol. 14:27–51 [Google Scholar]
  67. Kaye K. 2013. Rehabilitating the ‘drugs lifestyle’: criminal justice, social control, and the cultivation of agency. Ethnography 14:2207–32 [Google Scholar]
  68. Keane H. 2002. What's Wrong with Addiction? Melbourne, Aust: Melbourne Univ. Press.
  69. Keane H. 2004. Disorders of desire: addiction and problems of intimacy. J. Med. Humanit. 25:3189–204 [Google Scholar]
  70. Knight KR. 2015a. Addicted. Pregnant. Poor. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
  71. Knight KR. 2015b. Review of addiction trajectories. Med. Anthropol. Theory 2:1175–78 [Google Scholar]
  72. Kohrman M, Benson P. 2011. Tobacco. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 40:329–44 [Google Scholar]
  73. Kunitz SJ, Levy JE, Andrews TJ. 1994. Drinking Careers: A Twenty-Five-Year Study of Three Navajo Populations New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press
  74. Kushner HI. 2010. Toward a cultural biology of addiction. BioSocieties 5:18–24 [Google Scholar]
  75. Latour B. 1992. Where are the missing masses? The sociology of a few mundane artifacts. Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change WE Bijker, J Law 225–58 Cambridge, MA: MIT Press [Google Scholar]
  76. Latour B. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press
  77. Lende D. 2012. Addiction and neuroanthropology. See Lende & Downey 2012 339–62
  78. Lende DH. 2005. Wanting and drug use: a biocultural approach to the analysis of addiction. Ethos 33:1100–24 [Google Scholar]
  79. Lende DH, Downey G. 2012. The Encultured Brain: An Introduction to Neuroanthropology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
  80. Levine HG. 1978. The discovery of addiction: changing conceptions of habitual drunkenness in America. J. Stud. Alcohol Drugs 39:1143 [Google Scholar]
  81. Linnemann T, Wall T. 2013. ‘This is your face on meth’: the punitive spectacle of ‘white trash’ in the rural war on drugs. Theor. Criminol. 17:3315–34 [Google Scholar]
  82. Lock M, Nguyen V-K. 2010. An Anthropology of Biomedicine Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell
  83. Lovell AM. 2006. Addiction markets: the case of high-dose buprenorphine in France. See Petryna et al. 2006 136–70
  84. Lovell AM. 2013. Elusive travelers: Russian narcology, transnational toxicomanias, and the great French ecological experiment. See Raikhel & Garriott 2013 126–59
  85. Mandelbaum DG. 1965. Alcohol and culture. Curr. Anthropol. 6:281–93 [Google Scholar]
  86. Marshall M, Ames GM, Bennett LA. 2001. Anthropological perspectives on alcohol and drugs at the turn of the new millennium. Soc. Sci. Med. 53:2153–64 [Google Scholar]
  87. Martin E. 2006. The pharmaceutical person. BioSocieties 1:03273–87 [Google Scholar]
  88. Martin E. 2013. Following addiction trajectories. See Raikhel & Garriott 2013 284–92
  89. May C. 2001. Pathology, identity, and the social construction of alcohol dependence. Sociology 35:2385–401 [Google Scholar]
  90. McKim A. 2008. ‘Getting gut-level’: punishment, gender, and therapeutic governance. Gend. Soc. 22:3303–23 [Google Scholar]
  91. McKim A. 2014. Roxanne's dress: governing gender and marginality through addiction treatment. Signs: J. Women Cult. Soc. 39:2434–58 [Google Scholar]
  92. Meloni M. 2014. How biology became social, and what it means for social theory. Sociol. Rev. 63:3593–614 [Google Scholar]
  93. Meyers T. 2013. The Clinic and Elsewhere: Addiction, Adolescents, and the Afterlife of Therapy Seattle: Univ. Wash. Press
  94. Mintz SW. 1985. Sweetness and Power New York: Viking
  95. Moore D. 2007. Criminal Artefacts: Governing Drugs and Users Vancouver: Univ. B. C. Press
  96. Nadelmann E. 1990. Global prohibition regimes: The evolution of norms in international society. Int. Organ. 44:4479–526 [Google Scholar]
  97. Netherland J. 2012. Critical Perspectives on Addiction Bingley, UK: Emerald Group
  98. Nichter M, Quintero G, Nichter M, Mock J, Shakib S. 2004. Qualitative research: contributions to the study of drug use, drug abuse, and drug use(r)-related interventions. Subst. Use Misuse 39:10–121907–69 [Google Scholar]
  99. O'Malley P, Valverde M. 2004. Pleasure, freedom and drugs: the uses of ‘pleasure’ in liberal governance of drug and alcohol consumption. Sociology 38:125–42 [Google Scholar]
  100. Oldani M. 2014. Deep pharma: psychiatry, anthropology, and pharmaceutical detox. Cult. Med. Psychiatry 38:2255–78 [Google Scholar]
  101. Ong A, Collier SJ. 2005. Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems Oxford, UK: Blackwell
  102. Page JB, Singer M. 2010. Comprehending Drug Use: Ethnographic Research at the Social Margins New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press
  103. Peele S. 1985. The Meaning of Addiction: Compulsive Experience and Its Interpretation. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books/Heath
  104. Petryna A, Lakoff A, Kleinman A. 2006. Global Pharmaceuticals: Ethics, Markets, Practices Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
  105. Provine DM. 2006. Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press
  106. Prussing E. 2011. White Man's Water: The Politics of Sobriety in a Native American Community Tucson: Univ. Ariz. Press
  107. Rabinow P. 1992. Artificiality and enlightenment: from sociobiology to biosociality. Incorporations J Crary, S Kwinter 234–53 New York: Zone [Google Scholar]
  108. Raikhel E. 2010. Post-Soviet placebos: epistemology and authority in Russian treatments for alcoholism. Cult. Med. Psychiatry 34:1132–68 [Google Scholar]
  109. Raikhel E. 2012. Radical reductions: neurophysiology, politics and personhood in Russian addiction medicine.. See Choudhury & Slaby 2012 227–51
  110. Raikhel E. 2015. From the brain disease model to ecologies of addiction. Re-Visioning Psychiatry: Cultural Phenomenology, Critical Neuroscience, and Global Mental Health LJ Kirmayer, R Lemelson, C Cummings 375–99 New York: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
  111. Raikhel E, Garriott W. 2013. Addiction Trajectories Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
  112. Reith G. 2004. Consumption and its discontents: addiction, identity and the problems of freedom. Br. J. Sociol. 55:2283–300 [Google Scholar]
  113. Rhodes T, Singer M, Bourgois P, Friedman SR, Strathdee SA. 2005. The social structural production of HIV risk among injecting drug users. Soc. Sci. Med. 61:51026–44 [Google Scholar]
  114. Roizen R. 2004. How does the nation's “alcohol problem” change from era to era? Stalking the social logic of problem-definition transformations since repeal. Altering the American Consciousness: Essays on the History of Alcohol and Drug Use in the United States, 1800–2000 S Tracy, C Acker 61–87 Amherst: Univ. Mass. Press [Google Scholar]
  115. Room R. 2003. The cultural framing of addiction. Janus Head 6:221–34 [Google Scholar]
  116. Room R, Hellman M, Stenius K. 2015. Addiction: the dance between concept and terms. Int. J. Alcohol Drug Res. 4:127–35 [Google Scholar]
  117. Rose N. 2003a. The neurochemical self and its anomalies. Risk and Morality R Ericson, A Doyle 407–37 Toronto: Univ. Tor. Press [Google Scholar]
  118. Rose N. 2003b. Neurochemical selves. Society 41:46–59 [Google Scholar]
  119. Rose N. 2013. The human sciences in a biological age. Theory Cult. Soc. 30:13–34 [Google Scholar]
  120. Rose N, O'Malley P, Valverde M. 2006. Governmentality. Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci. 2:83–104 [Google Scholar]
  121. Saris AJ. 2013. Committed to will: What's at stake for anthropology in addiction. See Raikhel & Garriott 2013 263–83
  122. Schneider JW. 1978. Deviant drinking as disease: alcoholism as a social accomplishment. Soc. Probl. 25:361–72 [Google Scholar]
  123. Schüll ND. 2006. Machines, medication, modulation: circuits of dependency and self-care in Las Vegas. Cult. Med. Psychiatry 30:2223–47 [Google Scholar]
  124. Schüll ND. 2012. Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press
  125. Seddon T. 2007. Drugs and freedom. Addict. Res. Theory 15:4333–42 [Google Scholar]
  126. Sedgwick EK. 1991. Epidemics of the will Cult. Stud. Proj. MIT, Cambridge, MA
  127. Shaffer HJ. 1997. The most important unresolved issue in the addictions: conceptual chaos. Subst. Use Misuse 32:111573–80 [Google Scholar]
  128. Singer M. 2001. Toward a bio-cultural and political economic integration of alcohol, tobacco and drug studies in the coming century. Soc. Sci. Med. 53:2199–213 [Google Scholar]
  129. Singer M. 2007. Drugging the Poor: Legal and Illegal Drugs and Social Inequality Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland
  130. Singer M. 2012. Anthropology and addiction: an historical review. Addiction 107:101747–55 [Google Scholar]
  131. Slaby J, Choudhury S. 2012. Proposal for a critical neuroscience. See Choudhury & Slaby 2012 29–51
  132. Snodgrass JG, Lacy MG, Dengah HF II, Fagan J, Most DE. 2011. Magical flight and monstrous stress: technologies of absorption and mental wellness in Azeroth. Cult. Med. Psychiatry 35:126–62 [Google Scholar]
  133. Spicer P. 2001. Culture and the restoration of self among former American Indian drinkers. Soc. Sci. Med. 53:2227–40 [Google Scholar]
  134. Spradley JP. 1970. You Owe Yourself a Drunk: An Ethnography of Urban Nomads. Boston: Little Brown
  135. Taylor JS. 2005. Surfacing the body interior. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 34:741–56 [Google Scholar]
  136. Tiger R. 2012. Judging Addicts: Drug Courts and Coercion in the Justice System New York: N. Y. Univ. Press
  137. Valverde M. 1998. Diseases of the Will: Alcohol and the Dilemmas of Freedom Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
  138. Vrecko S. 2006. Folk neurology and the remaking of identity. Mol. Interv. 6:300–3 [Google Scholar]
  139. Vrecko S. 2010a. Birth of a brain disease: science, the state and addiction neuropolitics. Hist. Hum. Sci. 23:452–67 [Google Scholar]
  140. Vrecko S. 2010b. “Civilizing technologies” and the control of deviance. BioSocieties 5:136–51 [Google Scholar]
  141. Wacquant LJ. 2009. Prisons of Poverty Vol. 23 Minneapolis: Univ. Minn. Press
  142. Waterston A. 1997. Street Addicts in the Political Economy Philadelphia, PA: Temple Univ. Press
  143. Weinberg D. 2011. Sociological perspectives on addiction. Sociol. Compass 5:4298–310 [Google Scholar]
  144. Weinberg D. 2013. Post-humanism, addiction and the loss of self-control: reflections on the missing core in addiction science. Int. J. Drug Policy 24:3173–81 [Google Scholar]
  145. Whyte SR, van der Geest S, Hardon A. 2002. Social Lives of Medicines Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
  146. Wilcox DM. 1998. Alcoholic Thinking: Language, Culture, and Belief in Alcoholics Anonymous Westport, CT: Praeger/Greenwood
  147. Zigon J. 2010. “HIV Is God's Blessing”: Rehabilitating Morality in Neoliberal Russia Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102214-014242
Loading
  • Article Type: Review Article
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error