Readings

This section contains the readings for the course. Since participation counts as 20% towards a student's grade, students are expected to complete the readings for each session before class.

Books

Buy at Amazon Weil, Andrew, and Winifred Rosen. From Chocolate to Morphine. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1976. ISBN: 9780618483792.

Buy at Amazon Myerhoff, Barbara. Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976. ISBN: 9780801491375.

Buy at Amazon Bourgois, Philippe. In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780521574600.

Buy at Amazon Slater, Lauren. Prozac® Diary. New York, NY: Penguin, 1998. ISBN: 9780140263947.

Buy at Amazon Angell, Marcia. The Truth About the Drug Companies: How they Deceive Us and What to do about it. New York, NY: Random House, 2004. ISBN: 9780375508462.

Recommended Readings

Buy at Amazon Kuhn, Cynthia, Scott Swartzwelder, and Wilkie Wilson. Buzzed: The Straight Facts About the Most Used and Abused Drugs From Alcohol to Ecstasy. New York, NY: Norton, 1998. ISBN: 9780393317329.

Buy at Amazon Inciardi, James, and Karen McElrath, eds. The American Drug Scene: An Anthology. 3rd ed. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury, 2000. ISBN: 9781891487361.

Buy at Amazon Goode, Erich. Drugs in American Society. 6th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2004. ISBN: 9780072874983.

Go Ask Alice.

Readings by Session

The table below provides information about the course's lecture (L) and quiz (Q) sessions.

SES # TOPICS READINGS
L1 Introduction  
L2 Some Preliminary Ideas

Weil, and Rosen. From Chocolate to Morphine. pp. 9-35 and 161-182.

Buy at Amazon Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants. New York, NY: Vintage, 1993, pp. 15-84 and 167-187. ISBN: 9780679744382.

Becker, Howard. "Becoming a Marihuana User." American Journal of Sociology 59 (1953): 235-242.

Buy at Amazon Zailkas, Koren. "First Taste." From Her Smashed: Story of a Drunken Childhood. New York, NY: Viking, 2005, pp. 3-25. ISBN: 9780670033768.

Buy at Amazon Lenson, David. "Preface," and "User Construction." In On Drugs. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota Press, 1995, pp. ix-xx and 55-64. ISBN: 9780816627103.

L3 Alcohol in the U.S.

Movie: Reefer Madness Buy at Amazon Kuhn, Cynthia, Scott Swartzwelder, and Wilkie Wilson. "Alcohol." In Buzzed: The Straight Facts About the Most Used and Abused Drugs From Alcohol to Ecstasy. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1998, pp. 29-54. ISBN: 9780393045888.

Buy at Amazon Lender, Mark, and James Martin. Drinking in America: A History. New York, NY: Free Press, 1987, pp. 41-86, 102-168, and 182-191. ISBN: 9780029185704.

Wechsler, Henry. "Health and Behavioral Consequences of Binge Drinking in College." Journal of the American Medical Association 272, no. 21 (1994): 1672-1676.

Buy at Amazon Seaman, Barrett. "The Campus Alcohol Crisis," and "What's the Right Drinking Age?" Chapters 5 and 11 in Binge: What your College Student won't Tell you: Campus Life in an Age of Disconnection and Excess. Hoboken, NJ: Jonathan Wiley, 2005. ISBN: 9780471491194.

Buy at Amazon Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants. New York, NY: Vintage, 1993, pp. 147-166. ISBN: 9780679744382.

L4 Alcohol Across Cultures

Guest Speaker: Alcoholics Anonymous Mandelbaum, David. "Alcohol and Culture." Current Anthropology 6, no. 3 (1965): 281-288.

Leacock, Seth. "Ceremonial Drinking in an Afro-Brazilian Cult." American Anthropologist 66, no. 2 (1964): 344-354.

Buy at Amazon Scully, Pamela. "Liquor and Labor in the Western Cape, 1870-1900." In Liquor and Labor in Southern Africa. Edited by Jonathan Crush and Charles Ambler. Athens, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1992, pp. 56-77. ISBN: 9780821410271.

Buy at Amazon Burovoy, Amy. The Too-Good Wife: Alcohol, Codependency, and the Politics of Nurturance in Postwar Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005, pp. 1-15, and 42-66. ISBN: 9780520244528.

Spicer, Paul. "Toward a (Dys)functional Anthropology of Drinking: Ambivalence and the American Indian Experience with Alcohol." Medical Anthropology Quarterly 11, no. 3 (1993): 306-323.

Buy at Amazon Erdrich, Louise. "Foreword." In The Broken Cord. Edited by Michael Dorris. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1989, pp. xi-xx. ISBN: 9780060160715.

L5 "Primitive" Drugs

Documentary: The Peyote Road Myerhoff, Barbara. Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974.

Calabrese, Joseph. "The Supreme Court Versus Peyote: Consciousness, Alteration, Cultural Psychiatry and the Dilemma of Contemporary Subcultures." Anthropology of Consciousness 12, no. 2 (2001): 4-19.

L6 Drugs and American Counterculture

Movie: Timothy Leary is Dead Buy at Amazon Stevens, Jay. Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream. New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 1988, pp. 136-170 and 291-319. ISBN: 9780060971724.

Buy at Amazon Eisner, Bruce. "Dazed in the Desert at the End of Time." In Tripping: An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures. Edited by Charles Hayes. New York, NY: Penguin, 2000, pp. 78-85. ISBN: 9780140195743.

Buy at Amazon Collin, Matthew. "The Chemical Generation." Chapter 8 in Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House. London, UK: Serpent's Tail, 1998, pp. 267-316. ISBN: 9781852426040.

Buy at Amazon Lenson, David. "Acid Metaphysics." In On Drugs. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota Press, 1995, pp. 143-158. ISBN: 9780816627103.

L7 Cocaine, Latin America and Globalization

Buy at Amazon Morales, Edmundo. Cocaine: White Gold Rush in Peru. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1989, pp. 13-24, 67-93, and 121-158. ISBN: 9780816510665.

Buy at Amazon Roldan, Mary. "Columbia: Cocaine and the 'Miracle' of Modernity in Medellin." In Cocaine: Global Histories. Edited by Paul Gootenberg. New York, NY: Routledge Press, 1999, pp. 165-182. ISBN: 9780415220019.

Buy at Amazon Taussig, Michael. My Cocaine Museum. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004, pp. 13-20. ISBN: 9780226790084.

L8 Cocaine Consumption

Buy at Amazon Freud, Sigmund. "On Coca." Reprinted in White Lines: Writers on Cocaine. Edited by Stephen Hyde and Geno Zanetti. New York, NY: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002, pp. 26-49. ISBN: 9781560253785.

Buy at Amazon Lenson, David. "Blow Money: Cocaine, Currency and Consumerism." In On Drugs. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota Press, 1995, pp.173-178. ISBN: 9780816627103.

Bourgois, Philippe. Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996, introduction and chapters 1-2.

Q1 Quiz 1  
L9 Crack Dealers Guest Speakers Finish Bourgois.
L10 The War on Drugs

Office of National Drug Control Policy

Swiss Federal Office of Public Health. Swiss Drugs Policy (undated). (skim.)

Musto, David F. "Opium, Cocaine and Marijuana in American History." Scientific American (1991): 21-33.

Buy at Amazon Booth, Martin. "The Fantasy Traders." In Opium: A History by Martin Booth. New York, NY: Thomas Dunne Books, 1998, pp. 108-139. ISBN: 9780312186432.

Buy at Amazon Risen, James. "Losing Afghanistan." Chapter 7 in State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. New York, NY: Free Press, 2006, pp. 149-172. ISBN: 9780743270663.

Buy at Amazon Schlosser, Eric. "Reefer Madness." Chapter 1 in Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American black market. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2003, pp. 11-74. ISBN: 9780618334667.

L11 The War on Drugs (cont.)

Buy at Amazon Bertram, Eve, Morris Blachman, Kenneth Sharpe, and Peter Andreas. "Three Fatal Flaws in the War on Drugs." In Drug War Politics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996, pp.9-31. ISBN: 9780520203099.

Buy at Amazon Marez, Curtis. "Introduction." In Drug Wars: The Political Economy of Narcotics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2004, pp. 1-31. ISBN: 9780816640591.

Shenk, Joshua Wolf. "America's Altered States." Harper's, May 1999, 38-52.

Buy at Amazon Lenson, David. "Pharmaka and Pharmakos," and "Toward a Diversity of Consciousness." In On Drugs. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota Press, 1995, pp.7-24 and 189-201. ISBN: 9780816627103.

L12 Modern Pharmaceuticals: Sex

Buy at Amazon Tone, Andrea. Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2001, chapters 4 (optional), 10, and epilogue, pp. 67-87, 233-260, and 285-292. ISBN: 9780809038176.

Buy at Amazon Loe, Meika. The Rise of Viagra®: How the Little Blue Pill Changed Sex in America. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2004, chapters 1, 4, and 6, pp. 7-28, 95-124, and 167-182. ISBN: 9780814752005.

Silverstein, Ken. "Millions for Viagra®, Pennies for the Poor." The Nation, July 19, 1999, 13-19.

Q2 Quiz 2  
L13 Modern Pharmaceuticals: Prozac®

Documentary: Happy Valley
Kramer, Peter. "The Message in the Capsule." In Listening to Prozac®: A Psychiatrist Explores Antidepressant Drugs and the Remaking of the Self. New York, NY: Viking, 1993.

Slater, Lauren. Prozac® Diary.
L14 Big Pharma Angell, Marcia. The Truth About the Drug Companies.