2.3 Making Sense of Changing Definitions
How can we make sense of historical and cross-cultural variation in attitudes towards psychoactive substances and their use? How does a substance and its use elicit a hostile social response at one moment in time or in one culture and be seen as socially acceptable, normative or even socially desirable, at a different point in time or in a different culture? One way to address such questions is to explore these issues using a constructionist lens, as the constructionist framework can help answer the who, what, how, why and when questions pertaining to changing perceptions of social phenomena, including drug use.
Key General Questions to Ask Using a Constructionist Lens:
How do we as humans create meaning that then forms the basis of what we believe?
Why do some social phenomenon become the focus of public attention and not others?
Who is responsible for drawing public attention to social phenomenon and orienting how we view it?
What are the motives behind drawing attention to particular social phenomenon (e.g., wealth; prestige; social and/or political power; reinforcing a particular set of “morals”)?
When does/did such meaning making activity occur — during which timeframe?
Where does/did such meaning making activity occur (i.e., cultural context, geographic location – world, country, province/state, region, community; among particular social or political groups, etc.)?
When we talk about psychoactive substances, we often classify drugs using a good-bad dichotomy (Loseke, 2003). Some types of substance use, by certain groups of people, is viewed as “good”, “acceptable”, “normal”, while other forms of use by different groups is viewed as “bad”, “sinful”, “immoral”, “deviant”, or “criminal” (e.g., opioid use via prescription is viewed as an acceptable form of use; opioid use without a prescription is viewed as an unacceptable form of use).
The problem with such categorizations is that despite existing cultural definitions, substances and substance use are not inherently bad or good. Instead, how we view drugs and the policies used to control them are “products of human definition and interpretation and shaped by…cultural and historical context” (Kang, Lessard, Heston & Nordmarken, 2017, Unit 1, p.5). A constructionist lens is a useful tool to help us better understand how and why we view drugs the way we do, how and why perceptions of drugs and their use vary over time and across cultures, and how social processes and power relations influence our understandings of substances, their use, and what are viewed as appropriate means of social control.
