"Hard-to-define abstract concepts": Addiction terminology and the social handling of problematic
substance use in Nordic societies
Engelsk titel: "Hard-to-define abstract concepts": Addiction terminology and the social handling of problematic
substance use in Nordic societies
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Författare:
Room, Robin
Språk: Eng
Antal referenser: 29
Dokumenttyp:
Ledare
UI-nummer: 15013129
Sammanfattning
The articles in this issue analyse the interplay between
conceptualisations of problematic psychoactive substance use
and its social handling. The project which resulted in these
articles set out to compare conceptions of "problem use/misuse
under the heading of crime, addiction, public nuisance or similar
conceptions". It is a sister project to one in the EU ALICE
RAP project, led by Virginia Berridge, on the history of addiction
concepts in European medical literatures.
In Nordic traditions, initially for alcohol but later also for
other drugs, no very sharp line was drawn between habits and
alcoholism or narcomania as a disease, and there was little interest
in defining the difference. The articles offer evidence that
the addiction concept had some currency in Nordic societies,
although less than in Anglophone societies, so that it generally
was not an overall governing image (Room, 2001). Besides
addiction-specific terms, everyday language used terms (such
as missbrukare = misuser in Swedish) which could include the
concept, but did not clearly invoke it (rather like inebriate in
English around 1890).