Metamorphoses: Clashing Symbols in the Social Construction of Drugs

1995 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 799-816 ◽  
Author(s):  
Desmond Manderson
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Drug Users ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Drug Legislation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Emotional Imagery ◽  
Legislative Policy ◽  
The Aesthetic

In order to understand the nature and intensity of the debate over the reform of “drug” legislation, it is necessary to appreciate the aesthetic forces which influence attitudes to this question, and the symbolic meaning which is attached to the imagery of drugs. The “war on drugs” is a war about emotional imagery and contested symbols, and in particular about the idea of the boundary—a matter crucial to the metaphysics and social organization of Western society. At the same time, it will be argued, it is the failure to recognize that we are dealing with the symbolic realm which bedevils both drug users and legislative policy. The reification of symbols causes and perpetuates the very problems that are intended to be solved. In their fetishization of the objects of drug use, the law and the addict are far more alike than one might think.

The Social Construction of Transformative Political Events

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (10) ◽  
pp. 1243-1278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karlo Basta
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Conceptual Understanding ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The Social ◽  
Upcoming Event

Comparative political scientists have sought to remedy their subdiscipline’s structuralist tendencies by paying greater analytical attention to transformative political events. Yet, our conceptual understanding of events remains rudimentary. The article addresses this conceptual gap in two ways. First, it foregrounds symbolic meaning-making as the constitutive attribute of events. Second, it demonstrates that events are not inherently agency-facilitating by developing the concept of prospectively framed events. These are occurrences that actors know will take place, but of whose outcome they are uncertain. Political challengers frame the upcoming event so as to discursively trap incumbents into political action they would rather not undertake. The article demonstrates this process by tracing the conflict between secessionist challengers and political incumbents within the Catalan nationalist movement between 2006 and 2010. The concluding section discusses the causal implications of the argument.

WHOSE LIVES MATTER?

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 639-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia D. Simmons
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Multivariate Models ◽  
Social Construction Of Reality ◽  
National Agenda ◽  
Negatively Associated ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Civil Lawsuits

AbstractThis study investigates the characteristics of cases of police killing unarmed Blacks that receive national news coverage. I analyze an original quantitative dataset measuring the parameters of 111 cases occurring between 2013 and 2015, and the amount of coverage they received in six national news outlets. Multivariate models indicate that cases’ national newsworthiness is positively associated with Blacks’ share of the population where the fatal encounter occurred, and the presence of video evidence, peaceful demonstrations, or civil lawsuits. National newsworthiness is negatively associated with encounters that were initiated by a call to police, and those involving decedents who resisted arrest, suffered electroshock injuries, or were impaired by drugs or alcohol. The findings strongly suggest that the most newsworthy cases are those that align with an injustice frame. I discuss the results using theories of newsworthiness, describing how patterns of story availability and story suitability might shape which cases rise to the top of the national agenda. Using the social construction of reality approach, I discuss the implications of the results for how the public understands the empirical nature of police killing unarmed Blacks, and the symbolic meaning of these events.

scholarly journals Constructing Drug Using Victims

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofia Laguna
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Social Identity Theory ◽  
Drug Users ◽  
The United States ◽  
Drug Laws ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Congressional Hearings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Congressional Hearing

Sociologists and political scientists examining the social construction of public anxiety surrounding drug use in the United States have argued that racial minorities are the targets of the harshest drug laws while middle-class whites are shielded. In this article, I provide further evidence that middle-class, white drug users are shielded from harsh punishment by analyzing the process through which U.S. legislators and policy makers decide which drug users need punishment and which deserve protection and treatment. Analyzing transcripts from federal Congressional hearings, I examine the rhetoric of legislators and stakeholder witnesses concerning the use of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) by middle-class whites. Building on the social construction literature, I use social identity theory to demonstrate how legislators within Congressional hearings create in- and out-groups in order to categorize different drug users and dealers. My analysis of Congressional hearing language concerning white MDMA use demonstrates that Congressional speakers use rhetoric to convince committee members and the wider public that middle-class, white drug users are different from drug users of color and that the appropriate policy response is education and treatment rather than punishment. My findings highlight how middle-class, white drug users are characterized differently from drug users of color, providing further evidence that U.S. drug policy has historically favored middle-class, white drug users.

Putting People in the Picture: Art and Aesthetics in Photography and in Understanding Organizational Life

2000 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Strati
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Organizational Memory ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Organizational Contexts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Improper Use ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Understanding

This article considers both the common ground and the diversity between the aesthetic approach to the study of organizational life and conceptual art photography. Based on a personal account, it emphasizes the empathic-aesthetic understanding of action in interactive organizational contexts. The issues addressed are the social construction of organizational memory, the importance of time in organizational life, the interweaving between the reality and non reality of organizational artefacts, the pervasiveness of organizational reproduction, the relation between the `I' and the `eye' in the investigation of organizational processes, the improper use of organizational production, and the relationships between the collective and social construction of creativity niches.

La medicalizzazione della riproduzione umana: il corpo e il genere

2009 ◽  
pp. 185-201
Author(s):  
Lia Lombardi
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Reproductive Technology ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Reproduction ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Biomedical Technologies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Sociology Of Health

- This article is focussed on the medicalization of human reproduction and its effects on the body and on the gender. Particularly, the analysis is carried under two perspectives. The first one is the social construction and the social control on the body in Western society. Specifically, the question is how medicine surveilles bodies and behaviors of women and men. Moreover, the first part of this article analyses sexualities, reproduction/procreation and gender relationships. The second subject regards how stereotypes on gender and parenthood are connected to the social construction of infertility and of articial reproduction. All the topics are analysed through the lences of the sociology of health and of the body, in connection with the most recent advances in biomedical technologies. The gender perspective and a critical approach are the theoretical mainframes which have driven this research.Keywords: body, Gender, medicalization, human reproduction; reproductive technology, sociology of health.Parole chiave: genere, medicalizzazione, riproduzione umana, tecnologie riproduttive, sociologia della salute.

The Medicalization of Human Reproduction: Body and Gender

2009 ◽  
pp. 172-188
Author(s):  
Lia Lombardi
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Reproductive Technology ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Reproduction ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Biomedical Technologies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Sociology Of Health

- This article is focussed on the medicalization of human reproduction and its effects on the body and on the gender. Particularly, the analysis is carried under two perspectives. The first one is the social construction and the social control on the body in Western society. Specifically, the question is how medicine surveilles bodies and behaviors of women and men. Moreover, the first part of this article analyses sexualities, reproduction/procreation and gender relationships. The second subject regards how stereotypes on gender and parenthood are connected to the social construction of infertility and of articial reproduction. All the topics are analysed through the lences of the sociology of health and of the body, in connection with the most recent advances in biomedical technologies. The gender perspective and a critical approach are the theoretical mainframes which have driven this research.Keywords: body, Gender, medicalization, human reproduction; reproductive technology, sociology of health.Parole chiave: genere, medicalizzazione, riproduzione umana, tecnologie riproduttive, sociologia della salute.

scholarly journals When finance met security: Back to the War on Drugs and the problem of dirty money

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 106-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Amicelle
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Money Laundering ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
Public Concern ◽  
Social Spaces ◽  
The Social ◽  
Zero Sum ◽  
The U.S

When and how did the laundering of ‘dirty’ money become an object of public concern, debate, and ultimately policy at the intersection of finance and security? This article sheds light on the social construction of money laundering as a public problem in the context of the U.S. War on Drugs during the 1970s and 1980s. By doing so, the article also stresses the heuristic value of questioning the finance-security nexus through an analytics of public problems. Its aims are to: (1) avoid interdisciplinary debates around the finance-security nexus becoming trapped in a zero-sum game between the ‘securitization of finance’ and the ‘financialization of security’; and (2) understand better the emergence, re-configuration, and internal tensions of social spaces at the interface of finance and security.

scholarly journals The social construction of the value of wildlife: A green cultural criminological perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 384-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daan P van Uhm
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Wildlife Trade ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Exotic Animals ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Elites ◽  
Criminological Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Demand Patterns ◽  
Near Future

The trade in wildlife is not a new phenomenon. The earliest civilizations were linked to the trade in live animals and parts thereof, from the Egyptian pharaohs to aristocrats in the modern era. This article focuses on the history of the wildlife trade in order to understand the social construction of the value of wildlife. In dynamic social and cultural contexts, the meaning of wildlife changes. Historically, exotic animals and the products thereof were associated with social elites, but today, wildlife attracts people from all walks of life and a wide variety of live animals and products thereof are traded for functional, symbolic and social purposes. Increasing ecocentric and biocentric values in contemporary western society, however, may influence constructed demand patterns for wildlife in the near future. By integrating cultural criminological concepts with the social construction of green crimes, this article aims to understand constructed wildlife consumerism through the ages.

The Impact of Endorsing the Belief in a Just World on Social Judgments

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benoît Testé ◽  
Samantha Perrin
Keyword(s):  
Social Desirability ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Social Utility ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Social Judgments ◽  
Just World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Main Effect ◽  
The Impact

The present research examines the social value attributed to endorsing the belief in a just world for self (BJW-S) and for others (BJW-O) in a Western society. We conducted four studies in which we asked participants to assess a target who endorsed BJW-S vs. BJW-O either strongly or weakly. Results showed that endorsement of BJW-S was socially valued and had a greater effect on social utility judgments than it did on social desirability judgments. In contrast, the main effect of endorsement of BJW-O was to reduce the target’s social desirability. The results also showed that the effect of BJW-S on social utility is mediated by the target’s perceived individualism, whereas the effect of BJW-S and BJW-O on social desirability is mediated by the target’s perceived collectivism.

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