NAD Course 2006: Drinking and Drug Taking Practices

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NAD Course 2006 Drinking and Drug Taking
Practices

• Pekka Sulkunen
• IMAGES OF INTOXICATION

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Two misunderstandings

• Qualitative research can not be comparative
• Qualitatie research focuses on
• discourse, not behaviour
• ideas and values, not functions of needs
• reflected practices, not routines
• ? Do you know your research questions?
• ? Do you know your research instrument?

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If you are uncertain, make sure that

• you know what you are comparing
• arguments, representations, cognitions etc
• persons
• groups
• texts
• but of course NOT POPULATIONS!
• your instrument is specific and matches your
  research questions
• you know your action theory

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Culture norms, beliefs
Action
Means
Ends INTOXI- CATION??
Situation setting, personality environment
The Standard View of Social Action
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Charles Peirce (1839-1914) Hans Joas The
Creativity of Action, 1996 Erkki Kilpinen The
Enormous Flywheel of Society, 2000
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Images, definitions, discourses, representations?

• Images meaning, no subject, non-rational, open
  referent

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Reception Analytical Group Interview Technique
(RAGI)

• Purpose
• to offer a theoretically founded stimulus while
  avoiding pre-judgments
• to facilitate comparisons between groups
• to facilitate easy interviewing
• to avoid obtrusive interviewer interference
• Vignettes (or cues)
• Pre-interpretation (researchers reading) for
  precise research questions

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Semiotic modelling

• cultural reflexivity
• modalities
• enunciative structures who knows what?

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Cultural reflexivity
culture
elaborated
culture
ussubjects
regression
progression
othernon-subject
other non-adult
nature
raw
nature
rotten
Claude Lévi-Strauss Mythologiques 1. Le cru et
le cuit, 1964 Sulkunen Between Culture and
Nature intoxication in cultural studies on
alcohol and drug use. CDP, 2002
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Examples of cultural reflexivity and transgression

• Invitation, Deerhunters, American Beauty,

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(No Transcript)
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Modalities and the social bond

• Coastliner, Invitation, Man and Woman (alcohol
  and tobacco)
• Traffic, Human Traffic (drugs)

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Enunciative structures

• intratextual
• ignorance ? uncertainty (secret) ? knowledge
• constructing (and disrupting) the social bond
  (Coastliner, Man and Woman, Rio Lobo, American
  Beauty)
• extratextual
• whose feelings are being reported? (e.g. Drifting
  Clouds, Rio Bravo, American Beauty)
• is the narrator/viewer clutched (Rio Bravo) or
  disconnected (the Brecht effect, eg. Drifting
  Clouds)

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Images of addictions Research Design

• Question Is addiction related to self-control
  (will) in contemporary individualistic societies
• Vignettes addictions that seem and seem not to
  be
• Groups GPs and lay persons in different
  settings