Trafficking in Drug Users (Hardcover)

James Ralph Beniger

ISBN 10: 0521257530 / ISBN 13: 9780521257534

Published by Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1984

About this Item

Hardcover. Control of illegal drug use and abuse requires an elaborate network of organizations and professions: medical, legal, political, educational, and welfare. This book explores the way in which these diverse sectors coordinate the control of deviance in a complex society and how they respond to a sudden widespread increase in deviance spanning many institutional and professional domains. The latter of these concerns, James Beniger argues, affords us a unique insight into the more general question of societal control. He takes as an example of this phenomenon the dramatic appearance of the 'drug problem' in America in the Vietnam war era of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Exploiting this as an approximation of an experimentally induced disruption of society, Professor Beniger examines its impact on the interorganizational and professional networks that together constitute a system for the control of a social deviance.His study produces the startling finding that as various rewards - raises in salary, promotions, government funds, media exposure, enhanced status - accrued to the new social problem, many drug specialists gained increasing stake in the very deviance they were professionally charged to control. Societal control of the drug problem became transformed - quite literally - into a trafficking by professionals in young drug users. Control of illegal drug use and abuse requires an elaborate network of organizations and professions: medical, legal, political, educational, and welfare. This book, first published in 1984, explores the way in which these diverse sectors coordinate the control of deviance in a complex society. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780521257534

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Trafficking in Drug Users (Hardcover)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
• Publication Date: 1984
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521257530
• ISBN 13: 9780521257534
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Control of illegal drug use and abuse requires an elaborate network of organizations and professions: medical, legal, political, educational, and welfare. This book, first published in 1984, explores the way in which these diverse sectors coordinate the control of deviance in a complex society and how they respond to a sudden widespread increase in deviance spanning many institutional and professional domains. The latter of these concerns, James Beniger argues, affords us a unique insight into the more general question of societal control. He takes as an example of this phenomenon the dramatic appearance of the 'drug problem' in America in the Vietnam war era of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Exploiting this as an approximation of an experimentally induced disruption of society, Professor Beniger examines its impact on the interorganizational and professional networks that together constitute a system for the control of a social deviance.

Book Description

Examines the way in which the complex network of organizations and professions required for the control of social deviance coordinated their activities to solve the "drug problem" of the 1960s. Beniger demonstrates that incentives used to encourage law enforcement officials to control deviance actually fostered a desire to perpetuate drug abuse in return for various rewards.