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Overview
When Aldine originally published this book in 1969, the emerging multidisciplinary field of alcohol studies was dominated by biology, chemistry, physiology, and other "hard sciences." As such, writes Dwight Heath in his new foreword, the work challenged the prevailing wisdom in the authors' use of historical, ethnographic, and cross-cultural data and their analysis of drinking behavior as an anthropological and sociocultural phenomenon.Synopsis
Attempting to understand behavior under the influence of alcohol must take into account cultures, attitudes, social meanings, and a host of other factors that are beyond the merely physical, argued MacAndrew (U. of California at Irvine) and Edgerton (U. of California at Los Angeles) back in 1969 when they first published this work. They present a "social explanation" for behavior under the influence, rejecting much of the focus on pathology and deviance that still dominates much of the discussion of alcohol use or abuse. After setting out their theoretical stance, they apply it to examples from Native American groups. The book has a new foreword by Dwight B. Heath of Brown University. Percheron Press is the reprint imprint of Eliot Werner Publications. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR