Postgraduate Course: Researching Drugs and Alcohol in Society (PGSP11262)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course introduces students to themes and challenges in social research on drug and alcohol use. Students will explore key conceptual, ethical and methodological issues in researching all forms of psychoactive drug use, including illicit drugs, alcohol, smoking and psychopharmaceuticals. They will have an opportunity to conduct their own research and reflect on their research practice. The course is paired with the undergraduate 'Sociology of Intoxication' course so students will have an introduction to relevant themes and debates in the drug and alcohol field.
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| Course description |
Students may attend a one hour lecture which is shared with the undergraduate 'Sociology of Intoxication' course. This will give them a background in key theoretical and empirical issues in drug research. The main themes covered here are:
* Drugs and alcohol as objects of material culture
* Cultural practices and rituals in drug and alcohol use
* Construction and management of drug and alcohol problems
* Addiction and alcoholism
* Pleasure and the experience economy
* Postmodern governance of drugs and their users
* Criminalisation and trafficking
* Risk, vulnerability and stigma
* Medicalisation and enhancement
In addition they will be required to attend seminars solely for postgraduates on the topics of:
* Talking to users
* Ethnography and drug research
* Issues in population surveys and epidemiology
* Cross-cultural research
* Evaluation research
* Ethical and political issues in drug research
* Drug and alcohol policy and the research agenda
Further topic based seminars to be decided by the class and course organiser.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
* Understand the patterns and practices of drug, alcohol and tobacco use in the UK and internationally.
* Examine the terms in which some kinds of substance use becomes a 'public problem'
* Examine the strengths and weaknesses of various sociological, psychological, and anthropological approaches to and theories of substance use, including: medicalisation, risk, stigma, 'nudge' and social constructionism.
* Identify key conceptual problems and ethical challenges in research in this field
* Critically assess research methods used in this field and evaluate research findings
* Identify implications for practice and policy
* Conduct their own research on a related topic of their choice
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Reading List
Adler, P.A. (1993), Wheeling and Dealing: An Ethnography of an Upper-Level Dealing and Smuggling Community, New York, Columbia University.
Bancroft, A (2011) 'Memory, embodied cognition and intoxication problems', in press.
Becker, H. (1967), 'History, Culture and Subjective Experiences: An Exploration of the Social Bases of Drug-Induced Experiences', Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, 8, 3, 163-176.
Bergschmidt, V.B. (2004), 'Pleasure, Power and Dangerous Substances: Applying Foucault to the Study of 'Heroin Dependence' in Germany', Anthropology & Medicine, 11, 1, 59-73.
Bourgois, P. (1995), In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio, Cambridge, Cambridge University.
Greenslit, N. (2006), 'Dep®ession and Consumption: Psychopharmaceuticals, Branding and New Identity Practices', Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 29, 477-501.
Maccoun, R, and P Reuter. 2008. "The implicit rules of evidence-based drug policy: A U.S. perspective." International Journal of Drug Policy 19:231-232.
Macleod, John, and Matthew Hickman. 2010. "How ideology shapes the evidence and the policy: what do we know about cannabis use and what should we do?." Addiction 105:1326-1330.
Muetzelfeldt, L., Kamboj, S. K., Rees, H., Taylor, J., Morgan, C., & Curran, H. (2008). 'Journey through the K-hole: Phenomenological aspects of ketamine use,' Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 95, 219-229.
Room, R. (1976), 'Ambivalence as a sociological explanation: the case of cultural explanations of alcohol problems', American Sociological Review, 41, 6, 1047-65.
Room, R. (1984), 'Alcohol and Ethnography: A Case of Problem Deflation?' Current Anthropology, 25, 2, 169-191 and Commentaries.
Stevens, Alex. 2008. "Weighing up Crime: The Overestimation of Drug-Related Crime." Contemporary Drug Problems 35:265.
Valverde, M. (1998), Diseases of the Will: Alcohol and the Dilemmas of Freedom, New York, Cambridge University Press.
Don H Zimmerman and D. Lawrence Wieder, "You Can't Help but Get Stoned: Notes on the Social Organization of Marijuana Smoking," Social Problems 25, no. 2 (December 1977): 198-207.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Students will learn skills in:
Policy formation and criticism
Assessing research for practice relevance Researching with hard to reach groups Assessing research ethics Research writing
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| Additional Class Delivery Information |
Students may attend a one hour lecture sessions of the undergraduate 'Sociology of Intoxication'. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Angus Bancroft
Tel: (0131 6)50 6642
Email: Angus.Bancroft@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Jodie Fleming
Tel: (0131 6)50 3602
Email: Jodie.Fleming@ed.ac.uk |
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