Why people use drugs | |
Drugspeak. The analysis of drug discourse. John B Davies. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers 1997 (xii + 195 pp., $32.00). ISBN: 90 5702 192 7. |
Why do people
use drugs? Or, more pertinently, why do a proportion of young people use drugs in ways which harm themselves, and those around them? Given the significant adverse consequences of drug abuse, these are important questions. There is substantial research addressing these questions, but, as J B Davies demonstrates in this book, much of the research is value laden, most of it methodologically flawed, and much of it is simply banal. It is probably illusory to think that we can have a value-free scientific discourse about behaviour. But Davies, a professor of psychology at Strathclyde (Scotland), in an intriguing synthesis of British empiricism and European deconstructionism, attempts to develop a value-neutral, epistemologically sound way to investigate why people use drugs. Like a good positivist, he seeks to base his research, not on polemic or even primarily on logic, but on the demonstration of predictable results. However, much excellent science is based on things other than this -- including coherence, logical proof, explanatory power and parsimony. Certainly, in the hierarchy of knowledge, that which is based on being able to cause predictable change is more persuasive than mere logic. But, in the human sciences, where most events are over-determined, Davies' attempt to provide an epistemologically sound basis for collecting evidence seems at best optimistic. What Davies has primarily demonstrated is just how difficult it is to integrate deconstructionism into empirical research. He is more persuasive arguing than when presenting data. This might sound like a fatal flaw to people adhering to a "scientistic" faith in data. But, in most of the human sciences, much of the data is pretty woeful. The curious will read this book for its arguments (which are good) rather than its outline of a new methodology. James Bell
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