Pekka Sulkunen

Between Culture and Nature: Intoxication in Cultural Studies of Alcohol and Drug Use:

Theoretical attempts to formulate cultural theories of drinking and drug use have traditionally stemmed from norm theory or functionalism. These tend to reduce drinking and drug practices to intoxication alone or to neglect intoxication altogether. The semiotic turn in the 1980s brought “meaning” to the focus of cultural studies. This article proposes, following Bruno Latour, that cultural practices and discourses should be seen as translations of each other. Intoxication is a proto-semiotic fact between culture and nature, not being completely meaningful but not possible without meanings either. This is the reason why images of intoxication are powerful translations of social relationships and the relationships between humans and nature. It is especially powerful language to articulate status distinctions that are shaky or confused, such as between youths and adults.

Images of addiction: Representations of addictions in films

The dominant sociological image of addiction as lack of will or loss of control is connected with the expectations of individual self-control in modern societies. This article suggests a richer typology of images of addiction on the basis of the semiotic theory of modalities, focalisation and the “secret”. It centres around four modal groups: willing, competence, ability and obligation. A film clip archive on smoking, drinking, drug use and gambling was used to illustrate the model. Competence is often involved in drug scenes showing people celebrating their social skills and sense of authenticity. It is also a theme in gambling scenes. Obligation, especially loyalty to others, plays a role in various addiction-related scenes. Focalisation and the theme of the secret emphasise the interactive dimensions of addictions. Focus on willing alone biases views of addiction in individualistic and isolationistic way. Addiction is the negation of agency, involving all modal competences.

Reforming the self and the other: The temperance movement and the duality of modern subjectivity

This article looks at temperance history to understand how modern preventive alcohol-control systems were created and to understand why their ideological basis has now weakened. Temperance movements made a core contribution to the development of alcohol-control systems, but their argumentation contained an interesting paradox. While they demanded availability restrictions on alcohol they also stressed individual self-determination in alcohol consumption. They were able to combine these goals, which in contemporary public health policy discourse are felt to be contradictory. This duality was possible for two reasons. First, the temperance issue was raised in nascent nation-states and parliamentary political institutions. Convictions of moral superiority led some of the movements to seek in national prohibition a complete solution to all social ills. Second, the movements were not indifferent to the desires that the self-controlling will was expected to constrain. Abstinence from drink was embedded in a Utopian vision of authentic living and independent emotional life in the individual family. As soon as the movements lost the Utopian content of their pursuits they turned into conservative single-issue movements. Today the role of parliamentary nation-states as moral communities has been lost and the endorsement of the good family-centred life can no longer be the narrow objective of public policy. Alcohol control can only be justified in terms of specific consequences, particularly those for public health.

Is pathological gambling just a big problem or also an addiction

There is no research-based consensus on whether pathological gambling is also an addiction and not just a problem, and how it could be related to cultural factors. We present a critical review of dominant theories of addiction and propose our own theory based on the concept of images and the theory of agency. We show, using material from a Finnish internet discussion forum comprising 42 discussions with 487 messages, that the criteria proposed for Disordered Gambling in DSM-V correspond to the writers’ experiences with the exception of tolerance and craving. The most important experience of agency in gambling is a sense of skill. This may be related to competitive values in contemporary society. In the addicted state, the loss of that sense of agency is painful. As with substance-based addictions, it is experienced as the loss of pleasure and joy from the activity.

Geographies of addiction

Addiction presents a double paradox for a social scientist. At first, it appears as a narrow field of social and health policy, but at the same time social science research of addictions covers most areas of study in these disciplines: (public) health, social and psychological risk factors, social control, power and politics, economics and culture. Second, addictions are biophysiological conditions beyond doubt, and as such, as invariable as the human body. Nevertheless, the forms they take, the transitions from normal behaviours to dependence, the boundaries drawn to define them and societal reactions to as well as ideas regulating them vary historically and culturally. In themselves, such paradoxes are not unique to addictions – any disease is more or less subject to them. But these paradoxes concern addictions in a special way. Societies not only react to excessive behaviours in ways that must be understood by means of social science; the behaviours themselves emerge from the social. Nobody thinks of breathing, drinking water, nutrition, a minimum sense of being accepted and understood by others, or even sexuality, in themselves as addictions, even though we are severely dependent on them. It is dependency on something that does not seem to be a biological necessity – such as intentionally generated emission of adrenaline and endorphin, drinking alcohol, eating culturally elaborated food, co-dependency, or breaking sexual norms – that evokes the idea of a compulsion, which is in one way or another an element of all conceptions of addiction whatever their specific characteristics. The collection of papers published here represents a small sample of studies conducted in the social science research consortium “Theories and Images of Addiction” that the Academy of Finland funded in 2007–2011, and its continuation, the Helsinki Centre for the Study of Addiction, Control and Governance (CEACG) funded by the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. These papers highlight the social dimension in the process of addiction, or what happens when behaviours that within some limits are considered normal turn into abjects, and what is believed to happen to subjects of such behaviours afterwards: recovery alone or with professional help, death, or simply continued suffering for the self and for others. The articles by Atte Oksanen and Varpu Rantala use materials that constitute accounts of this intermittent state. The former deals with autobiographies of rock musicians, in whose world the cultural “supplement” of intoxication has long been the norm, just as using drugs was an expected form of transgression among romantic literary authors in the late 18th century (Taylor, 1999). Transgression and the modern myth of originality involve a kind of self-sacrificing heroism that JeanNAD

Universalism against particularism. Kettil Bruun and the ideological background of the Total Consumption Model

Aims This article discusses one of the dominant doctrines in the alcohol policy field today; the need to regulate the total consumption of alcohol in the population. This position is theoretically justifiable and based on a large body of evidence. However, in practice its consistent implementation is rare. This contradiction results partly from inefficiency of the instruments – price control and availability restrictions – but it has an ideological background that will be the focus of this article. Design and Data Our paper goes back to the sources of Kettil Bruuns ideas that led to the publication of Alcohol Control Policy in Public Health Perspective in 1975. This book started the wave of research and policy debate on the Total Consumption Model that continues to date. We also base our argumentation on information received by Bruuns colleagues and peers. Results Many of Bruuns ideas originated from studies of areas other than alcohol. Three elements in his previous research experience were particularly important: (a) studies on power, (b) research on international drug policy, and (c) criminology and social control in general. Conclusions Economic power often contradicts the public interest. Drug policy demonstrates how such power leads to selective approaches in social control, and research on social control warns of the danger of discrimination against vulnerable populations. Against this, Bruuns approach to social policy stressed transparency, the priority of the public good against particular privileges and the importance of universalism in social policy to avoid particularistic biases. These elements motivated Bruuns interest in the total consumption approach.

Alcohol Consumption and the Transformation of Living Conditions

This chapter represents a synopsis of a research project which was begun in 1973 under the auspices of the Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies. The original aims of the study were rather loosely set. The main idea was to conduct a broad analysis of the world’s alcohol industry, paying particular attention to the role of the international alcohol trade. It soon became evident that no study of alcohol consumption, founded on comprehensive international data, existed—not to speak of such aspects of the alcohol question as production and trade. Again, this meant that the first task was to form a general impression of the consumption of alcohol in recent years. Looked at in this light, it became clear that this study of international alcohol production and trade should address itself to one main issue: what role do production and trade play in the virtually world-wide growth of the consumption of alcohol? In the course of the study it became increasingly evident that this question can only be answered by coming to grips with the theoretical problem of how to explain the growth of the consumption of alcohol generally.

A Social and Economic Theory of Consumption

Foreword The Sociology of Consumption: A Brief History Markets and the Neo-Liberal Utopia of Omnipotent Markets Commodities and Consumption: General and Specific Features Want, Need and Commodity Consumption and the Necessary Economic Conditions for Consumption The Use and Meanings of Money Mechanisms of Consumption Choice and their General Cultural Framework Consumption as Ideological Discourse Consumption as Use: Our Relationship to Commodities

Agency and power: The contractual illusion

Many forms of governance today stress the contractual form. This article asks if this phenomenon is real or just an illusion. The contract is analysed in light of Steven Lukes’ power theory. The contractual form avoids everything that the Lukesian or Foucauldian ‘third dimension’ of power seeks to establish. Contracts aim to make power visible, transparent, accountable and based on conscious, informed consent. The article argues, on the basis of the theory of justification developed by Boltanski and Thévenot, that contractual power is a response to the principle of justification in contemporary society, where agency is a measure of human dignity and worth. Contractual power explains the tendency to exclude people who are incapable of assuming agency. The contractual form is literally an illusion, but has real consequences in society.

Public Drinking, Problems and Prevention Measures in Twelve Countries: Results of the WHO Project on Public Drinking

Until recently, drinking in public venues has been a relatively neglected area of alcohol research despite the epidemiological significance of problems arising from drinking in licensed establishments and other public venues. In the WHO Project on Public Drinking, expert informants in 12 countries provided detailed information on alcohol consumption, drinking in public settings, the nature and magnitude of problems associated with public drinking, the regulation of public drinking, enforcement and prevention. The most commonly indicated problems associated with drinking in public venues were underage drinking, impaired driving, and alcohol-related violence. Many of the informants in the survey expressed concern that the enforcement of alcohol licensing laws receives very low priority on the political agenda. In general, few countries have developed prevention programs aimed specifically at preventing problems arising from drinking in public venues. Nonetheless the informants identified a wide variety of measures that can be taken to reduce these problems in public drinking environments. These include general alcohol preventive education, alcohol control measures (including restrictions on hours and days of operation), improved enforcement of licensing laws, impaired driving countermeasures, server training and the use of civil law to promote responsible beverage service, and the promotion of low-alcohol-content beverages.