ANTH106 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Mary Douglas
5 Jun 2018
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ANTH6
Drug Symbolism
Anderson's analysis of drug symbols
• "Metamorphoses: clashing symbols in the social construction of drugs"
• Need to move away from the reason fro drug laws, and consider the aesthetic
• "The needle is the very emblem of illegal drug taking" - Manderson
• "It will act as a medium between the outside world and our bodies" - Manderson
Drugs and Pollution
• Hypodermic syringe (needle) and aesthetic aversion
• The needle as 'boundary violation' and pollution
• Influence of anthropologist Mary Douglas (Purity and Danger, 1966): pollution as
'matter out of place' She argues that its a 'boundary violation' as to why a person
can't spit and then put it back in, for example. She makes this connection with needles
- it is a foreign object that is entering your body.
• Manderson: needle is "metal out of place" "Smell physically challenge our sense of
boundary" "An odor is already a boundary violation"He argues that these boundary
violations are what symbolise drugs
Drugs and Possession
• "Possessed: drug policy, witchcraft and belief" - D.Manderson , Cultural Studies
• Theory and laws of property: 'possession' assumes humans actively appropriate and
use passive things.
• Criminal law of drug 'possession': mere proximity establishes a presumptive crime.
The drug attaches itself to a person.
• Drugs are invested with a powerful agency. "The crime of possession is the crime of
being possessed" - the drugs posses you. A person must work to prove their innocence
if they are fun with drugs in their possession.
Seductive Power of Drugs
• Manderson makes connections between witchcraft law and drug law
• He also draws parallels between sex and drugs: The double sidedness of drug
symbolism. He sees it as addictive like sex, and there is a 'sexual nature' in drug
taking.
Drugs as Scapegoats
• Drugs can be a scapegoat for elite and middle-class anxieties about deviant youth
behaviour
• Drugs are dramatised
• Drug laws are about symbolic theatre, to show people what to do and what not to do.
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