Drugs
and Culture: New Perspectives

Editors: Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Sandra
Goulart, Maurício Fiore, Edward MacRae and Henrique Carneiro - Researchers of NEIP
(Interdisciplinary Group for Psychoactive Studies, www.neip.info).

Publisher: EDUFBA

Support: Brazilian Ministry of Culture (MinC) and Research Support
Foundation of the State of São Paulo (Fapesp)

ISBN:
978-85-232-0504-1

Format: 17 X 24 cm, illustrated - 440 p.

Price: R$ 40.00 (Brazilian
Reais + shipping fee)

Summary:

There is an excess of topics related to the theme of
“drugs” that are not related
with the Dionysian or with any notion of “abuse” or overdose.  They
deal with an abundance of clichés, prejudices, moralism, and fixed
ideas.  Few topics nowadays touch
upon as many taboos and prohibitions as that of psychoactive drugs.  This rule of thumb does not apply to all
psychoactive drugs however. Rather, it generally concerns those prohibited by
law or condemned by the dominant morality, by conventional psychology, and by
medicine.  An enormous quantity of legal drugs produced by the pharmaceutical industry
lives side by side with illicit drugs that generate around themselves a
powerful international war that mobilizes states and networks of traffickers who
hold global influence.  Traditional uses of age-old drugs simultaneously
exist with new practices related to these substances.  And in any case, the literature that
deals with the “question of drugs” is not accustomed to go beyond
the narrow field that goes from medical works of a largely conservative nature,
passes through the books of law, and
ends with the often sensationalistic journalistic reports. Until recently, the social sciences formed a disciplinary space occupied
by a few brave efforts to study “drugs,” but these few efforts were
surrounded by an overbearing silence.
The book Drugs: Perspectives from
the Social Sciences, the result of a
symposium organized by the Interdisciplinary Group for Psychoactive Studies
(NEIP, www.neip.info) and that took place at
the Universidade de São
Paulo in 2005, represents an important push by researchers in the areas of
anthropology, sociology, political sciences, law, and history to approach the topic of “drugs” from
multiple angles and who have as their common ground the staunch criticism of
the prohibition of these substances.
Comprising seventeen articles, besides a preface and an introduction,
the volume is organized into three
parts:  “Drugs and Prohibition
in the West,” with four articles that reflect on the history and logic of
the current day prohibitionist regime; “From
the Hard Sciences to the Humanities: Drugs, Medicine and the Social Sciences,” with three articles that examine
the role of interdisciplinarity in the analysis of psychoactive substances; and
“Uses of Psychoactive Substances in Perspective,” which covers the
majority of the texts in the collection and approaches
the topic of drugs from the perspectives of different fields such as
anthropology, ethnology and history.
The work offers an ample spectrum of approaches
that constructs points of convergence and dialogue, and which creates zones of
tension that are evident in the lack of
consensus and composure that is common when dealing with a question like that
at hand.  This book serves as a
reference for those who do not align themselves with what has already been
published about “drugs” and who feel enough discomfort to be
propelled to seek out other angles, viewpoints, and ideas on the topic (Thiago
Rodrigues)

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