Consuming habits: drugs in history and anthropology

Abstract

Jordan Goodman, Paul E Lovejoy and Andrew Sherratt (eds), Consuming habits: drugs in history and anthropology, London and New York, Routledge, 1995, pp. xii, 244, £35.00 (0-415-09039-3). A persistent feature of human cultures is the use of substances that alter mental states, which are incorporated into rituals, social life, and patterns of trade. These substances have occupied a somewhat awkward position at the edge ef various disciplines, such as medical history and anthropology, despite their evident importance. Their use has attracted considerably less scholarly attention than food consumption, for example. This book contains ten essays by anthropologists and historians, discussing the social context of psychoactive substances. The subtitle is somewhat misleading as several of the authors take issue with the medico-legal implications of the term "drugs" and most of the substances discussed are not currently prohibited. Apart from articles on cocaine in the United States and the Japanese narcotics trade, the authors focus on legally consumed substances such as alcohol and tobacco, tea and coffee, kola and betel, in periods ranging from prehistory to the present. Most psychoactive substances have very ancient origins. Problems often arise when they are taken from their traditional setting and introduced to a new one. The demoralized native Americans were further undermined by "firewater". The introduction of smoking opium was associated with despised Chinese migrants. Moreover, social change can stigmatize a previously accepted substance. The desert warriors of Islam condemned the consumption of alcohol in the fertile valleys of Mesopotamia and Persia. The concept of "passive smoking", providing a victim group, has transformed the modern campaign against tobacco. The commercial transmission of psychoactive substances is not a new phenomenon, although the trade of the multinational tobacco companies and the Colombian cocaine cartels are enterprises on an unusually large scale. Opium, cannabis and alcohol were all introduced into prehistoric Europe, and wine became a major component of Mediterranean trade. In the seventeenth century, the wealth of London and Amsterdam was founded in part on the Atlantic tobacco trade. The decline of the British opium trade provided a commercial opportunity for Japanese entrepreneurs. Kola and betel have extended into areas where they are not produced, as items of sociable exchange and conspicuous consumption. The use of Virginia tobacco and Scotch whisky are worldwide markers of elite sophistication despite waning popularity in their home cultures. Several of the essays address trade, taxation and control, although there is still a great deal of scope for combining cross-cultural and economic analyses of these issues. Moral condemnation of such substances is almost as ancient and widespread as their use. Campaigners against particular substances, whether their rhetoric is based on religion or science, tend to ignore the universality of the human search for psychoactive substances. The stigmatized item is depicted as alien, immoral or dangerous. More acceptable psychoactive substances are defined as belonging to a different category of objects, such as food or medicine. Indeed, the strategic use of the substance in question may be ignored altogether, leading to a mismatch between the rhetoric of campaigners and the motives of the target group, so that the campaign turns into little more than a social labelling process. Attacks on substances are generally intended as attacks on the social mores or religious rituals of the user group. The Jesuits in Canada regarded abstinence from tobacco as the most heroic evidence of religious conversion (p. 71). There are inevitably gaps in this collection, although many can be filled by reference to the notes and bibliography. It would have been interesting to see some discussion of the relationship between the psychopharmacology of substances and the cultural construction of their use, which is often surprisingly malleable. Relatively little attention is given to some interesting topics, such as why some substances are not appropriated by other