Stephen Mugford

Recreational Cocaine use in Three Australian Cities

Recreational, non-dependent cocaine users (n=73) were contacted in three Australian cities during 1986-7 using snowball sampling. They completed questionnaires on a variety of topics, were then interviewed about drug use. Compared with the general population, respondents were disproportionately young, well educated, unmarried, metropolitan, and non religious. They were ‘liberal’ on a variety of issues and supported fringe or ‘left’ political parties. Respondents showed no pattern of pathology on health and well being indicators. They scored low on institutional integration measures (family, party, church, etc) but high on informal aspects (friends, colleagues, etc). Respondents used a wide range of licit and illicit drugs and were initiated into cocaine use later than other drugs. Cocaine was principally consumed by ‘snorting’ and used as a ‘party’ drug. Users reported controlling their use, with few problems, but acknowledged the existence of dangers and usually knew someone who had experienced problems ...

The st. Oswald's Day Celebrations: “Carnival” versus “Sobriety” in an Australian Drug Enthusiast Group

“St. Oswalds Day” is celebrated each year in Canberra, Australia, in a day devoted to drug using and excess. “St. Oswald” is an invention of a group of illicit drug users, who parody orthodox religion and satirise straight society in the celebration. The group are drug enthusiasts — that is, while not dependent users of any illicit drug their drug use, in both its variety and intensity, is much more than recreational. Drawing on both interview data with twenty-seven “Oswaldians” and participant observation with the group, the article outlines the nature of St. Oswalds Day, followed by a discussion of the methods used and of the group itself. It is shown that the group, while very unconventional, exhibits social solidarity and organisation, in strong contrast to the images of anomie, disorganisation and pathology emphasised in conventional accounts of drug use. The article closes by discussing how St. Oswalds Day confronts the “sobriety” of modern society (an epitomisation of the Protestant Ethic) with an image of “carnival” (epitomising the Hedonist Ethic) and suggests that much conventional treatment of drug use is blind to questions of historical context and social structure.

STUDIES IN THE NATURAL HISTORY OF COCAINE USE-THEORETICAL AFTERWORD

A central commonality between the studies reported in this edition is argued to be important. They reveal a globalized pattern of cocaine use among geographically diverse groups of young, urban, secular people. Cocaine is used for recreational and entertainment purposes, is not commonly associated with ‘drug problems’ and is part of a ‘lifestyle’ in which the ‘rhythms’ of that lifestyle dictate cocaine use, not vice versa. Three general arguments are advanced in relation to this finding. First, the pattern of controlled use with few problems is surprising only to those who operate with defective models of human agency. Second, the rhythms of life are historically varied- some of the ‘rhythms’ of modernity and postmodernity are peculiarly fitted to drug use. Third, even within a given epoch, rhythms are varied between different social locations, creating different ‘settings’ for drug use and hence possibly different use patterns for (chemically) the ‘same drug’.

Racial and Class Factors in the Sentencing of First Offenders1

In any multi-racial society such as New Zealand, which proclaims the equality of all men in spite of ’racial’ differences, there is always some concern to ensure that there is real equality in terms of the treatment of groups of its citizens. One area to which this applies is the treatment of citizens by agencies of the Criminal Justice systemparticularly the police and the courts. If the situation arises, as it has in New Zealand, where one or more ethnic minority groups is proportionately over-represented in the statistics relating to criminal conviction or imprisonment, then there is always concern as to whether this over-representation reflects the higher rate of offending of members of such groups or rather the excessive concentration of agents upon that

Social integration, social networks and marital ‘pathology’: The case of heterogamy

SynopsisHeterogamy — the marriage of partners with markedly different social characteristics — is considered as a potential source of pathology, such as marital breakdown or neurosis. This paper develops an argument that heterogamy per se is not the cause of problems. Rather, heterogamy may disrupt social networks surrounding the couple. Two possible results follow. Either the partners, being very different, form two independent and different sets of friends. This results in a ‘weak tie’ marriage likely to break. Or the partners remain close, have no friendship network and thus become isolated. Isolation may then lead to neurosis. Data from previous sources and from an Australian survey are used to test propositions derived from this argument, and receive support.

Of Kafka and Captain Kidd: The Morphology of the Supervisory Role1:

’No people exist whose morality is not daily infringed upon’ (Durkheim, ]952: 362). It is by no means a novel sociological insight to point out that all social groups have topics of (non) discussion that are more or less taboo. Within tertiary educational institutions, one area which comes into this category, at least in respect of public debate, is that of the treatment of graduate students. Though anecdotal evidence in respect of sociology graduate students is extensive, and although this evidence appears to be in no way unusual, relatively little is written on the topic. ’Everybody knows’ that there are complaints, ranging from students who find their progress obstructed, through those whose work is neglected, to those whose work is ’stolen’ for publication under the name of the supervisor. Relatively few people, however, seem prepared to discuss the topic publiCly.2 Those who do discuss the matter seem preoccupied with the question of whether or not students are ’unfairly’ treated by their supervisors. Chapman (1974: 147-149) makes a distinction between exploitation and neglect, but implies that both are only facets of ’unfairness’. Witton’s (1973) discussion focuses on the ’unfairness’ of a

Book Reviews : Life as Theatre: A Dramaturgical Source-Book Dennis Brisset and Charles Edgley (eds.), Chicago, Aldine, 1974, pp. 387,

is no original material in the book, and virtually all the references are readily available and have been discussed, usually much better, in any other text on organisation. The mixture of role theory, functionalism and systems theory, as used in this book, presumes that there are common aspects to what the foreman does. This presumption is never proved, and the author’s bid for generality substitutes jargon for people, and input-output conversions for the experience of operating a turret lathe. The author fails to explore the implications of the few social (as against managerial) observations he makes. For instance, why