The Righteous Right

When these curricula narrate recent history, they document the firm alliance between the Republican Party and the religious right. The two groups shared common concerns about such issues as the sexual revolution, drug culture, and the welfare state. From his first venture into national politics in 1976, Ronald Reagan proved to be the ideal candidate for both groups. Evangelicals believed that, under Reagan, the federal government would leave education to local authority. These curricula herald the successful presidencies of Reagan and George W. Bush in furthering the agenda of the Christian right—advancing Christianity and capitalism. They claim that Republicans advance Christian values and American power; Democrats undermine both. These curricula judge the rest of the world on how well they conform to these ideals and support American interests. Because the historical narrative is virtually identical to the history of the religious right, recent history is their story.

The Ethos and Telos of Michoacán’s Knights Templar

This essay is an ethnographic exploration of the ethos and mores of Mexico’s contemporary drug culture. It uses temporal directionality (telos) to interpret the idiosyncratic symbols and rituals developed for the warrior order known as the Caballeros Templarios or Knights Templar cartel (Michoacán). The essay shows that Mexican drug organizations, in their dedication to the business of privatizing public goods, are thus at the same time parallel state structures and trust-based organizations of brothers working to build a collective future. The essay emphasizes the cultural elaboration of competing communitarian and bureaucratic organizational forms and ideals in order to explore the leadership style and moral codes of honor of the Knights Templar, underscoring the centrality of transnational movement in the invention of an acutely gender- and class-based culture of violent domination and caste formation.

Ginsberg’s Prophetic Guru

For Allen Ginsberg, Blake was more than a poetic influence, he was a spiritual forefather. Blake played an integral role in Ginsberg’s relentless self-fashioning and Ginsberg repeatedly turned to Blake in his search for poetic and social freedoms. Blake became a figurehead of the drug-fuelled psychedelic revolution of which Ginsberg was part. But Ginsberg’s Blakeanism went far beyond the claims of the drug culture towards a more serious and thoughtful poetic engagement with freedom and form, influence and authenticity. Like many of the older generation of American poets, Ginsberg yoked Blake together with Whitman. He saw them as icons of gay and homosocial culture, who debunked the prejudices of social conservatism and advocated an ethic of sexual openness and communality. Blake became an aid to a more affectionate re-envisioning of the myth of America, where tenderness and embrace were a means to positive social action.

A virtual academy of polydrug use: Masters, novices and the art of combinations

Aims: Information technology has become an essential part of drug culture, providing a platform for lay knowledge concerning drug use. Due to the co-effects of different substances, making substance “combos” requires advanced skills to enhance pleasures and manage risks. In this study, we focussed on Finnish and Swedish online discussions as a context for learning and sharing experiences of combining substances. Methods: Taking influences from positioning theory, we used qualitative methods to map what kinds of mutual interactive positions related to the expertise in polydrug use online discussants take and how these positions are negotiated and reformulated in the online setting. We reflect these results through Howard S. Becker’s theory of social learning, according to which becoming a drug user is a process that occurs in interaction with other users, as the beginners need a model and advice from experienced users in order to claim their place in the users’ community. Results: In online forums, users discuss the risks and pleasures of combining drugs – on the one hand, in relation to different situations and, on the other hand, in relation to different competence positions. This occurs by asking for advice, presenting one’s knowledge, challenging others, repositioning oneself, defending one’s position or proving one’s competence. Conclusion: Online discussion forums constitute a kind of virtual academy where knowledge of the pleasures and risks of combining substances is produced and circulated, and where experienced masters mediate their expertise to less experienced novices.

Factors Driving an Egyptian Adolescent Girl to Drug Addiction: A Case Study

Use of illicit drugs among women is rising worldwide. The problem usually stems during adolescence. Substance prevention and treatment programs targeting adolescent girls are essential. Little is known about the factors that drive Egyptian adolescent girls to use illicit drugs as well as what stimulates them to seek treatment. This case report describes qualitative findings from an interview with an adolescent girl who has been an inpatient in the females' substance abuse unit in Al Maamoura hospital in Alexandria, Egypt. Weak emotional ties with the mother and lack of family supervision as well as presence in a drug culture were main reasons for abusing drugs. Implications for future research are discussed.

The Business Of Getting High

Chapter three examines countercultural entrepreneurs who sold paraphernalia for enhancing LSD trips or for smoking marijuana at small stores called head shops. Head shop owners hoped their stores would provide hippies with desperately needed public spaces where they could gather in peace without being harassed. More importantly, these entrepreneurs believed their products allowed people to alter their minds – and even their societies – through meaningful drug use. In addition, many head shops collaborated with a small but growing movement to undermine, reform, and eradicate America’s drug laws, while also supporting the anti-war movement. Yet as head shops became increasingly popular, law enforcement, legislators, and parents’ groups assailed them as promoters of a dangerous drug culture with no redeeming social or political value. These attacks on head shops represented one of the first salvos in the cultural and legislative War on Drugs that would escalate in the 1980s.

MULE TALES: AN EXPLORATION OF MOTIVES AMONG FEMALE DRUG SMUGGLERS

This study is an exploration of motives among female drug smugglers held under custodial control in a Caribbean prison. This exploratory study provided some insight into why women engaged in the risk associated with smuggling drugs. While past research has primarily focused on the economic hardships women tried to address by engaging in drug smuggling, other research has emphasized the glorification of drug culture in some communities, past victimization and abuse, and the need to improve one’s status. This research revealed some additional reasons that are not typically examined in extant research. In particular, some women rather than making a rational choice to smuggle drugs, were simply tricked or bamboozled into schemes to smuggle and that in many instances, women became involved in smuggling because of their desire to please or help a male figure in their lives.