Can Sociology Explain Addiction?

Can Sociology Explain Addiction?

The study of addiction-a state characterized by compulsive engagement in

rewarding stimuli, despite the knowledge of adverse consequences(Malenka et

al., 2009)- is most commonly thought to materialize and belong in the

disciplinary territory of neuroscience. However, sociology- the study of the

functioning, structure and development of human society- has a wealth of

insights to contribute to the explanation of this intriguing phenomenon, starting

from the fundamental affirmation that an addict is always and everywhere

inextricably rooted in a particular socio-cultural environment. In this paper-

focusing on narcotic and alcohol addictions in particular-I shall first briefly

explore the dominant neuroscientific brain-disease model of addiction before

criticizing it through the sociological lens of social constructivism. Then,

following a critical break down of the economically influenced rational choice

model of addictive behaviour, I shall explore what the sociological approaches of

both structural functionalism and symbolic interactionism can offer to the study

of addiction. Building on this, I shall then suggest that sociology can best be

harnessed in the explanation of addiction if a hybrid sociological approach is

taken, combining a holistic awareness of macro structural influences operating

in society as a whole (the structural functionalist insight) a richly detailed,

empathetic appreciation of the self-identity and interaction patterns of the

user(the symbolic interactionist insight) and a critical deconstruction of the

cultural powers and institutional forces that mould our very conceptualization

and discursive framing of addiction itself(the social constructivist insight).

However, despite the comprehensive depth of this layered sociological approach,

I shall conclude by emphasizing the need for a multidisciplinary, integrative

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approach, which- when buttressed by a post-humanist deconstruction of social

and biological boundaries- helps us to most meaningfully explain the what, how

and why of addiction, when and wherever it may occur.

In order to understand how sociology can aid the explanation of addiction it is

sensible to first briefly explore the dominant neurobiological paradigm that

conceptualizes addiction as a ‘brain disease’. This ubiquitous notion of addiction

as a “chronic, relapsing brain disease”-as officially defined by the National

Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA,2014) which funds circa 85% of the world’s

research into addiction( Clark,2011)- rests on the idea that drugs induce

physiological changes in the brain’s structure, drastically affecting the operating

of its rewards systems. Hyman(2005) famously claims it is not the chronic brain

changes that distort the motivational processing of the addict, but the drugs’

direct stimulation of the pleasure pathways, which he claims “hijacks” the

normal motivational process thus leading to progressive loss of control. By

regularly taking the drug-and thus regularly increasing the dopamine activity in

the nucleus accumbens and prefrontal cortex- there arises a reduced sensitivity

to alternative sources of reward and a heightened sensitivity- on the mesolimbic

dopaminergic pathways- to the anticipated rewards of drug, which is thought to

lead to a progressively more intense and persistent spiral of drug use. However,

the basic neuroscience of incentive sensitization upon which the ‘disease’ claim

is grounded is flawed given that such sensitization is a basic part of the processes

of learning, memory and forgetting; the assessment between anticipated and

experienced reward by the dopamine neurons serves as the “basis of

experimental learning”(Kalant,2009:783) in all activity, not just chronic drug

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use. The said neurological adaptations occurring in the brain are caused by the

dopamine release, not the originating behaviour, thus the changes in the addict’s

brain are the same changes that anyone undergoes when they engage in any

rewarding activity; simply living our day-to-day lives changes our brains. The

striking fact that most people who take drug substances do not become addicted-

despite experiencing the same changes in dopamine activity is a clear sign we

must look beyond the substance itself to meaningfully explain addiction.

This is where the sociological discipline comes into its own, helping us fill in the

gaps that neuroscience leaves gaping, pushing beyond the mechanisms of how

addiction takes place and proceeding to understand why only some people taking

substances become addicts while the majority do not. Any and all human

behaviour is expressed within a particular social, historical and cultural context

and a sociological approach helps us understand the crucial role these settings

can play in explaining addiction. A potent stride taken to show the sociological

contingency rather than physiological inevitability of addiction was Professor

Bruce Alexander’s critique of the rat experiments empircally butrressing the

disease model–where rats in isolated cages which chose to drink a

heroin/cocaine laced water over plain water repeatledly and obsessively until

they killed themselves was taken as proof of addiction resulting in a ‘loss of

control’. Alexander, however, noted that given the rat was put in the cage all

alone with nothing to do but take the drugs, the compulsive drug-use of the rat

was simply “an artifact of the radically isolated conditions of the experimental

situation”(Alexander,2010:194). Thus, in the 1970s Alexander re-ran the

experiment after building ‘Rat Park’-a cage with an abundance toys, food, tunnels

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and other rats- this time finding the rats in this better cage mostly shunned the

drugged water, consuming less than a quarter of the drugs the isolated rats used

(Hari,2015). At the same time as the Rat Park experiment a helpful human

equivalent was unfolding in the Vietnam War. Of the 20 percent of U.S soldiers

who had become addicted to heroin in Vietnam, 95 percent of which simply

stopped on returning home(Robins et al, 1974), illustrating the power of social

setting to influence drug use. The shift from the abhorrent social setting of

Vietnam to the comforting home setting-i.e. moving from a terrifying cage to a

pleasant one- was crucial in influencing the soldiers’ pattern of drug use.

The social constructivist approach to addiction is particularly illuminating here,

introducing us to the notion addiction is not just influenced by social factors but

is fundamentally a culture-bound construction, unintelligible outside the cultural

casing within which it is found. Zinberg (1980,1984) for example, explored how

even biological processes such as withdrawal and loss of control (considered by

those who adhere to the medical model as core identifiers of the addictive state)

are not an inevitable outcome of drug use but in fact strongly influenced by

pyschological variables (one’s ‘set’) and more so by social contexts (one’s

‘setting’.) For Zinberg, one simply couldn’t fully understand addiction without

taking into account the immediate social situation in which drug use occurred

and the broader values, sanctions and beliefs particular social groups bring to

drug use. Using Zinberg’s insights, we can more easily explain Alfred

Lindesmith’s-dubbed “the father of the sociology of

addiction”(Weinberg,2011:299)- earlier discovery of the vastly different

patterns of heroin use between those formally adminstered heroin in a hospital

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setting and those self-adminestering on the street, given the vast differences

between physical locations and social attitudes involved in both situations. The

flavour of dangerous, antisocial activity and thrill of illicit pleasure experienced

on the street sits in stark contrast to the institutional structure of licitness

subsuming the formal hospital adminstration of the drug thus it is hardly

surprizing that Lindesmith observed so few patients in the hospital settings

continuing their heroin involvement longer than was therapeutically necessary.

Further, social construcivist arguments can further our understanding of

addiction by opening us up to the idea that drug effects may in fact vary

depending on the social context and processes of social learning surrounding

them. To exemplify this, Zinberg fruitfully compares the extreme reactions to

psychedelic drugs in the 1960s (many pyschiatric hospitals reported as much as

one-third of their admissions resulted from ingestion of these drugsin the mid

sixties (Robbins et al.,1967)) to the more tempered reactions in the 1970s.

Zinberg puts the change in extremity down to the power of social learning; the

“great hopes” and “total unfamiliarity” of users in the 1960s led to a far more

intensive experience than the 1970s users who’d been exposed to a “decade of

interest in pyschedelic colours,music and sensations”(Zinberg, 1980:242).

By paying attention to the importance of social setting, sociological insight is

thus attuned to something the neuroscientific brain disease model misses here;

the addictive potential of the substance itself is influenced not just by its

pharmacological properties, but by the social environment surrounding its use.

As DeGrandpre argues, “drugs are animated by the ecology of the human settings

they enter”(2007:174), meaning that the pharmacological action of a particular

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drug cannot be considered in isolation from the powerful and complex social,

cultural and historical context within which it is taken. Drug effects do not

present themselves to users’ in some “raw, pre-categorical form” without the

“linguistic encasements” provided prior to ingestion by culture

(Reinarman,2005:316). A potent corroboration of this can seen in the advent of

nicotine patches in the 1990s. Though smokers could get all of their chemical

hooks from these patches without the other dirty and deadly effects of cigarette

smoking, the Office of the Surgeon General has found that only 17.7 percent of

smokers are actually able to stop by using them(Hari, 2015). Thus, clearly the

biochemical hooks of the addictive substance, championed as the cause of

addiction by many neuroscientific diesease model theorists,are only a minor part

of a much larger picture which sociology enables us to zoom out and appreciate.

Furthermore, the social constructivist perspective provides a powerful critique

of the dominant addiction-as-disease model by picking apart its “invention under

historically and culturally specific conditions” promulgated by particular actors

and institutions(Reinarman,2005:308) with an implicit normative bias. Looking

beyond the façade of empirical rigour and “scientific razzle

dazzle”(Alexander,2010:187) which has been bolstered by new technological

breakthroughs in brain-imaging devices, it seems the disease model infact masks

long-standing moral judgements. Decorte(2011), for example, has examined the

morality behind the modern science of addiction, rightly noting the “scientific

fear of being high” has produced a “moral-medical concept of

addiction”(2011:36). It seems that whenever there is strong moral opprobrium

against a particular behaviour, this behaviour is often cast as the product of a

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disordered or diseased mind. For example, in 1851 Dr. Samuel Cartwright

reported the discovery of a new disease ‘drapetomania’- where local New

Orleans slaves were described as suffering from an “addiction” to running away

from their owners(Foddy & Savulescu,2010:9). In much the same way it was

difficult for those in the American south during the mid-nineteenth century to

believe a sane slave would want to escape captivity, today we find it difficult to

believe a sane person would wish for outcomes that are harmful to their

health ,given the normative prioritization of health over pleasure in modern

society. By taking into account these culturally contingent moral judgements, a

social constructivist approach thus helps us to deconstruct the diesease model of

addiction and see the normative bias underlining it.

Delving further back into history, the constructivist approach helps us trace the

rise of the diesease model as a kind of shadow to the normative ideal of the freely

choosing subject, in much the same way Michel Foucault argued the concept of

madness emerged in a mutually constitutive relationship to

reason(Foucault,1965). The advent of early capitalism- with its championing of

the autonomous productive individual and its cultural demand for the

“renunciation of pleasure for the sake of piety and

productivity”(Reinarman,2005:310)- was strategically accompanied by a greater

emphasis on the ominous nature of the addiction-as-disease shadow. The

flourishing of the label of addiction as a debilitating disease which causes the

neglect of other activities is hardly surprizing in the context of a capitalistic

culture so thoroughly structured around the clock, which as Room puts it, “views

time as a commodity which is used or spent rather than simply

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experienced”(2004:226). Essentially, It is in the interests of the capitalist society

to dissuade their citizens from drug use by diseminating information about the

liklihood of such use spiralling into an abhorrent sickness, given production of

capital can be maximized when such distractions are not present. Further, as

Acker explores in her socio-historical study of how the ‘American Junkie’ was

created, the construement of addiction as a disease which leaves one “degraded

and irredeemable” was strongly influenced by the agendas of a number of

professional industries; namely, psychiatrists seeking to increase their medical

authority and pharmacologists with disciplinary ambitions to build a “drug

development infrastructure in the U.S to rival that of Germany”(Acker,2002: 224,

10). Thus, taking a social constructivist perspective, enables us to view addiction

less staticly and more dynamically, as a “set of ideas which have a history and a

cultural location”(Room,2004:221). Rather than simply taking addiction as a

given, constructivst approachs thus offer a greater critical depth in the study of

addiction, alerting us to the powers, material interests and normative bias

implicit in the very framing and conceptualization of the term itself.

Another prominent approach to explaining addiction is the rational choice

paradigm, which, rooted in neoclassical economics, essentially argues addiction

manifests the cost-benefit calculations of addicts. Becker and Murphy (1988)

inaugerated the micro-economic theorizing on addiction, arguing addictive

behaviour comes down to the addict making a choice- in full knowledge of its

future costs and benefits- which is a simple reflection of the preferences of actors

and their broader assessments of their circumstances. The key insight of their

model was that just because a good is addictive, there is no reason that its

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consumption cannot be analyzed in a standard rationally optimizing framework.

Becker and Murphy’s key empirical prediction that announced future tax

increase should decrease current consumption (because the anticipated future

costs of addiction have gone up relative to current benefits) has been

corroborated by a number of economic studies on the smoking industry, such as

Gruber and Koszegi’s (2001) findings that smokers cut down their current

tobacco intake when ciggarette taxes were credibly announced to double in a

year. Though other alternate choice models of addiction differ - be it Skog’s

(2000) calls to perecive it as an instability of preferences that flux over time,

Ainslie’s (1992) argument addicts are vulnerable to temptations against their

better judgements through their consistent preference of present to future

rewards and tendency to ‘hyberbolically discount’ the future rewards or

Foddy &Savulescu’s(2010) naming it as a strong appetite towards pleasure- they

all plant the emergence of addiction in the autonomous individual’s thought

processing, challenging the notion addiction entails a ‘loss of control’.

However, most now agree that utilizing the axioms of orthodox rational choice

theory to explain addiction is simply inadequate. Despite modifications to the

orthodox theory having marginally increased its credibility, overall these

arguments theorizing addictive behaviour to be the product of rational and

voluntary cost-benefit calculations tend to remain “tenuously grounded in

emprical data”(Weinberg,2011:304), simply being “poorly interpreted,

empirically unfalsifiable” idealized narratives of addiction “based on wildly

inaccurate assumptions” rather than actual empirical instances of it(Rogeberg,

2004:263). To characterize addiction as something the addict is completely in

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control of and propose it can be neatly modelled as a kind of forward-looking

optimal consumption plan does seem out of sync with the harrowing and painful

accounts of addiction as a debilitating affliction we hear from addicts themselves.

To take a memorable example, the account in Terry Williams’ (1992)

ethnography Crackhouse from one of his subjects ‘Joan’ that addicts are “like

zombies” who’ve “lost all sense of what’s going on”(1992:24) just seems totally

at odds with the neat, rationalistic depictions of addicts the choice theoeretic

arguments present. These choice theories however, can be improved and

attuned to reality by bringing a sociological perspective to the table and

incorporating the importance of context into our understanding of how decisions

are influenced. The choice theories that incorporate this social contextual

awareness prove far more useful, such as Heyman’s(2009) argument that though

people do not choose to be addicts, normal choice dynamics can lead to addiction

when an addict sees no better alternatives under certain social circumstances.

For example, Heyman notes that drug abusers tend to be unmarried, with the

implication that the presence of a marriage partner, who is a potent source of

social consequences, provides alternatives that can effectively compete with

alternatives like drugs(2009:154-5). By taking a sociologically informed

approach, realizing an individual making decisions is always rooted in a

surrounding social context ,we get a fuller, richer picture of the addict. Ultimately

though, given choice theories still have a firmly rooted focus on the individual,

only working social factors in as a secondary influence at best, we must turn to

sociological approach of structural functionalism to understand not just why this

or that person becomes an addict, but why so very many do and why they are

disproportionately concentrated in particular groups.

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Focusing wholly on social structural explanations, structural functionalist

accounts of addiction place the phenomenon in the broader category of deviant

behaviour. For example, Robert Merton, in his famous essay ‘Social Structure and

Anomie’(1938), suggested drug addicts and chronic drunkards exemplify the

‘retreatist’ adaptation, the least common of his five modes of adjustment

whereby people adopt apparently deviant patterns of action. Merton’s theory

directly builds on Durkheim’s (1893) theory of ‘anomie’-which is a sort of “state

of confusion”(Gomme,2007:48) involving an absence of social ties that bind

people to society and where norms about good and bad have little salience in

peoples’ lives. On Merton’s terms, addicts were those who understood both the

propriety of cultural goals and the institutionalized procedures society affords

for achieving those goals but who cannot produce the desired results by socially

sanctioned, legitimate means(Weinberg,2011:300). Resultantly, there occurs a

retreat from social life into “defeatism, quietism and

resignation”(Merton,1938:678). Merton’s proposition was developed by Cloward

and Ohlin (1960) in their “Double Failure” hypothesis, arguing that addicts were

not opposed to adopting illegitimate means of achieving cultural goals(as Merton

held) but were incapable of utilizing even these means for obtaining social

rewards. Thus, addicts were deemed double failures in their bifold inability to

achieve through either legitimate or illegitimate opportunity structures. In

empirical reality, these retreatist theories would thus lead one to expect addicts

to be those with little socio-economic ties binding them to society at large. This

has been corroborated by a number of studies positively correlating addiction

with unemployment(such as Torres& Lito’s(2009)study of economically

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disengaged drug addicts in Lisbon), severe economic deprivation (such as Parker

et al.’s (1986) study of the geographical deprivation patterns matching

Scotland’s addict population) and homelessness (such as Marsden&

Howes’(2003) study of homeless addicts’ escalation of substance abuse once on

the streets in the south of England). By explicitly focusing on how the social

structural circumstances of peoples’ lives can result in addictive behaviour, the

structural functionalist perspective can thus help free the study of addiction

from the presumption of a brute biological or psychological basis.

However, the structural functionalist approach does have a tendency to

stereotype addicts as neccesarily disadvantaged and frequently “confuses the

trappings of poverty with the trappings of addiction”(Weinberg,2011:301). The

diverse abundance of addiction studies conducted to date have made it evident

that addiction is a condition that pervades all sectors of society regardless of

socio-economic standing; wealth by no means buffers one against addiction. To

take a recent example, a large scale study analyzing the data of heroin addicts

entering substance abuse treatments across the United States hailed the new

face of heroin to be the ‘young middle class surburban’(Cicero et al.,2014). It

seems that by focusing on macro structural features of addiction, functionalist

accounts miss out on more subtle aspects of addictive behaviour, such as the

possibilty these middle class addicts may be less easy to detect given their

financial resources allow them to maintain the appearance of an ostensibly

integrated life. This neglect of the complex, detailed intricacies of addictive

patterns of behaviour and oversight of the interpersonal and intrapersonal

aspects of addiction can be remedied through the sociological approach of

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symbolic interactionalism, which introduces a more micro-level, close up focus

on social interaction in specific situations. Arising in the second half of the

twentieth century as a broad turn against the “correctional” perspective of

functionalism-which “failed to grasp the personal meanings of individuals”-

symbolic interactionism takes a more empathetic “appreciative” stance in

studying addiction(Matza,1969:15-16), no longer assuming that addictive

behaviour was necessarily problematic for those engaged in it simply because it

was reviled by the mainstream. Rather than investigating the structural

mechanisms of functional breakdown and making inferences based on trends

predicted from large data sets, qualitative sociologists localized their attention,

utilizing in-depth interviews and ethnographic techniques to provide richly

detailed descriptions of drug cultures and build a more comprehensive,

humanistic portrait of the life worlds affected by addiction. Some such accounts

aid our explanation of addiction through focusing closely on the self-identites

and role construction processes of addicts. For example, by conducting in-depth

interviews and studying the interactive behaviour patterns of addicted college

students and the cultural context of their drug-use, Winick(1980) was able to

detect the prominent feature of ‘role strain’ contributing to their addictive use.

Rather than brute biological accounts that would point to the physiologically less

developed prefrontal and frontal cortex in adolescents (the place where impulse

control and risk taking behaviour are controlled), Winick’s more detailed

culturally attuned study of the students detailed a number of contributory

factors to feelings of role strain such as the decline in clothing as an indicator of

age-graded role expectations, the role competitiveness induced by the extensive

numbers of young people seeking similar goals and the loss of positive role-

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models in mass media(1980:229-230). This more contextually attuned role

strain focus seems to a helpful improvement on Merton’s functionalist strain

theory, giving us a more detailed and culture-specific account of how some

groups lean towards addictive behaviours more than others.

Denzin’s(1993) symbolic interactionist account, for example, introduces the role

of the lived body and emotions of the substance user,suggesting alcoholics suffer

from an “emotionally divided self” wherein “the self is divided against itself”

leading to a kind of disembodiment(1993: 121,362). Perhaps this internal

bipolarity would also help explain Weinberg’s(2000) oberservations of the

narrative techniques used by drug addicts in Los Angeles recovery facilites, who

linked their behaviour to distinct ecological spaces; contrasting the ‘dirty’, deeply

lonely ecological space of addiction “out there” to the deliberate, clean ecological

space of the recovery programme(2000:613,617). By appreciating how addicts

themselves create these emotionally-laced divisions between the addicted and

‘clean’ self, we are better able to understand how the user justifies and engages

with their own addictive behaviours, a surely crucial compenent to incorporate

when seeking to explain the addiction phenomenon. Pharmacological properties

of drugs, cost benefit analysis calculations and analysis of the functional

discrepancies of social structure will only take us so far; a detailed qualitative

analysis, which thoroughly incorporates the addicts’ perspective and personal,

emotional interaction processes, is needed to fully explain addiction.

Furthermore, the very methodological style and ethnographic flavour of the

qualititive, interactionist approach provides a useful sensitivity to the local

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settings of addictive experiences, which, as previously explored in Zinberg and

Alexander’s work in this paper, can be of essential importance. To take a recent

example, Parkin’s (2013) in-depth ethnographic study of the various drug using

environments in the south of England(studying various injecting settings such as

public toilets, parking lots, derelict buildings, secluded stairwells and rooftops

across Plymouth, Barking and Dagenham) uses a descriptive richness to show

how location itself can influence and encourage the drug-using tendencies of

addicts. Parkin utilizes Bourdieu’s notion of ‘structuring structures’ to show

show certain arbitrary conditions can shape habituated and embodied action of

addicts ; harm does not depend on the properties of the drugs themselves but is

made and sustained via the many spaces and places injecting drug use takes

place( Parkin,2013:113-5) This in depth approach-which conducted hundreds of

detailed interviews with addicts and hours of video footage in the field- can thus

add a lot to our understanding of addiction, picking up on subtler context-

specific patterns that more broad, macro approaches might miss out on, such as

the role concealment and marginality play in the contextual encouragement of

drug-use. Without richly descriptive on the ground accounts such as these,

addiction studies would be missing a vital understanding of the interactive,

contextually constructed dynamics of addictive behaviour.

Ultimately, though the sociological approaches of social constructivism,

structural functionalism and symbolic interactionism have been explored

independently in this paper, I’d like to suggest sociology can aid us the most with

regard to explaining addiction, if we combine the beneficial insights of each

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approach to form a new, superior hybrid; a sort of ‘structural constructivist

interactionism’. This hybrid approach would incorporate; an awareness of

macro-structural influences encouraging addiction in the context of a functional

societal whole (the structural functionalist insight), a critical understanding of

the institutional powers and cultural forces shaping the very conceptualization

and signification of addiction in a particular contextual instance (the social

constructivst insight) as well as a richly detailed, locally attuned, on-the-ground

appreciation of the interactive and emotional dimensions of the addictive

experience from the addict’s point of view(the symbolic interactionist insight).

To demonstrate the effectiveness of this sociological hybridity it may be fruitful

to apply it to an empirical example. To pick up on Winick’s(1980) analysis of

American college student addictions relating to their relative feelings of role

strain (through loss of role models and intensive competetiveness for similar

goals), we can add to this an appreciation of the structural strain brewing at a

wider level where the saturation of the job market has led to retreatist feelings of

disillusion given the legitimate means (good jobs) of attaining the culturally

valued goals (financial success) seem out of reach. By then critically

deconstructing the established depiction of addiction(as a volition-swallowing

brain disease) as perpetuated by a number of prominent professional interests

in the students’ cultural milieu, we may remove the negative filter of social

normative bias, and perhaps start to see it as something more akin to strong

bonding where other bonds are deficient. Finally, by conducting in-depth

interviews and spending time studying the students’ behavioural routines in

ethnographic depth, we may begin to unlock insights about how not only their

particular drug-using locations and interactive peer dynamics can encourage use

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but also how their own emotions and methods of self-identity construction can

shape their addictive patterns. Taking such a thoroughly layered sociological

approach- appreciating addiction in a broad social structural sense, a detailed

humanistic sense and critically picking apart the very discursive framing of the

concept itself -could only help but deepen our comprehensive understanding of

the addictive behaviour patterns in question.

Crucially, however, regardless of the abundant insights such a layered

sociological approach can bring, the study of addiction is best approached

through an integrative multidisciplinary analysis. To meaningfully accommodate

the heterogenity of addictive disorders we must blend together the insights from

a broad array of disciplines such as neuroscience, psychology, economics and

sociology. However, rather than studying addiction through a particular

discipline and then attempting to incorporate other disciplinary insights around

it for the aesthetic appearance of integration, it would be more fruitful for us to

actually break down the rigid disciplinary boundaries in place and study

addiction more dynamically as it spans across all disciplines, simultaneously. The

post-humanist tradition within social constructivism offers guidance for us in

this regard, encouraging us to treat human nature as not intrinsically immutable

but rather as something dynamically and diversely constituted through various

configurations of practice within which actors, humans or otherwise, mutually

mould one another (Weinberg,2013; Latour, 2004). Particularly insightful is

Haraway’s (1991,2007) post-humanist calls for us to breakdown the oft

juxtaposed ‘social’ and biological’ boundaries and view them not as two

independent ontological domains but as socio-historically dynamic,

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heterogeneous and interdependent fields of practical action which interweave in

a “shaping dance of encounters”(2007:4). Further, the recurring conflict in

addiction literature between addictive behaviour being a ‘choice’ or a ‘loss of

control’ can be delicately resolved through an adoption of the post-humanist

sensitivity to study. Though Weinberg himself may come down more on the ‘loss

of control’ side, we can still yield a lot from his post-humanist insight that self-

control should not be based on generic diagnostic criteria but on the basis of a

much more subtle, holistic and dynamic regard for the particular details people’s

personalities, drug use patterns and fluxing living conditions(Weinberg,

2013:180). Thus, to take forward these post-humanist insights, we should

endeavour to understand addiction in a more dynamic, detailed and contextually

attuned manner-avoiding trying to fit it into the neat dualism of autonomy vs.

subjugation-appreciating its most meaningful explanation involves a complex

interweaving of a multiplicity of disciplines.

To conclude, in this paper I have tried to demonstrate that sociology has a rich

abundance of insights to offer explanatory studies of addiction. After exploring

the shortcomings of the dominant neuroscientific brain disease model of

addiction through social constructivism, I then proceeded to critique the

economically influenced rational choice model of addiction before highlighting

the significant gains a structural functionalist and symbolic interactionist

approach can provide. I attempted to show that sociology can offer the most to

addiction studies through a hybrid blend of sociological approaches; combining

the macro-structural awareness a structural functionalist ‘zoomed out’ approach

provides, the richly detailed, locally attuned appreciation of the addicts’ personal

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life-worlds the ‘zoomed in’ symbolic interactionst approach offers and the

critical deconstruction of the cultural powers and institutional forces that shape

our very conceptualization of addiction that social constructivism affords. This

layered sociological amalgamation however, no matter how comprehensive and

illuminating, is still best incorporated into a broader integrative

multidisciplinary approach. Rather than granting hegemony to a particular

discipline’s operating system and then simply suggestively planting the other

disciplines around it to create the shallow aesthetic appearance of integration,

we must genuinely embrace the overlapping, interdependent nature of the

disciplines for any hope of meaningfully explaining addiction. By blending our

previously explored sociological insights with the post-humanist approach’s

insight on the need to break down the rigid boundaries between the social and

biological, move past the simplistic dualism of autonomy and subjugation and

view everything as interweaving in a heterogenous field of practical action, we

will surely be best equipped to attempt a laudable explanation of addiction,

when and wherever it should arise.

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