This brief, compelling life story of a drug addict poses and answers questions of broad public concern about social responsibility, illicit drug use, hidden economies, and social inequality. Merrill Singer, a medical anthropologist involved in the public health impact of alcohol and illicit drug use, conducted interviews over a seven-year period with Tony, a street drug addict who grew up in the inner city. Tony learned the ways of using and selling drugs from his father, became an enforcer in a street gang, spent considerable time in prison, committed seemingly heartless, violent acts, and has had to struggle with the knowledge that he suffers from HIV infection. Tonys life story is an insider, personal view of a tumultuous, marginalized world that intertwines closely with the wider social milieu constructed and sustained by the U.S. political economy. Unique to this book is its attempt to understand the forces that contribute to the risky behavior of drug use, even at a time when drug users know about its deadly and damaging connection to diseases like HIV and hepatitis. Tonys story demonstrates that none of us make choices in a vacuum. Further, the book addresses important issues about how structures of social inequality in our society impact the lives and options of those at the bottom of the social ladder.

There are various forms of suffering that are best described as social suffering, such as stress, harassment, experience of poverty and domination. Such suffering is a matter of social concern, but it is rarely a matter of discussion in the social sciences, political theory or philosophy. This book aims to change this by making social suffering central to an interdisciplinary critical theory of society. The author advances the various contemporary debates about social suffering, connecting their epistemological and political stakes. He provides tools for recasting these debates, constructs a consistent conception of social suffering, and thereby equips us with a better understanding of our social world, and more accurate models of social critique. The book contributes to contemporary debates about social suffering in sociology, social psychology, political theory and philosophy. Renault argues that social suffering should be taken seriously in social theory as well as in social critique and provides a systematic account of the ways in which social suffering could be conceptualised. He goes on to inquire into the political uses of references to social suffering, surveys contemporary controversies in the social sciences, and distinguishes between economical, socio-medical, sociological, and psychoanalytic approaches, before proposing an integrative model and discussing the implications for social critique. He claims that the notion of social suffering captures some of the most specific features of the contemporary social question and that the most appropriate approach to social suffering is that of an interdisciplinary critical theory of society.

"This research-based, theory-driven account of the changing underground world of drug use and associated health effects covers the essential ground in a brisk, authoritative fashion. After a thorough outline of the nature and history of drug use dynamics, the author assesses the role of youth in new drug use practices, the impact of illicit drug distribution and the War on Drugs, and the public health risks of new trends in drug use behavior." "The volume provides an up-close account of the social worlds of drug sellers and users and the processes of change in patterns of drug consumption. Additionally, it considers mechanisms for effective public health response to emergent health risks associated with changing drug use patterns. Because Merrill Singer carefully explains all technological terms, uses clarifying examples, and avoids jargon, readers will walk away from this volume with a deeper grasp of this social problem; with appreciation for how change figures into drug use practices; and with knowledge of key social, cultural, political-economic, criminal justice, and health factors."--BOOK JACKET.

Fragments of Trauma and the Social Production of Suffering: Trauma, History, and Memory offers a kaleidoscope of perspectives that highlight the problem of traumatic memory. Because trauma fragments memory, storytelling is impeded by what is unknowable and what is unspeakable. Each of the contributors tackles the problem of narrativizing memory that is constructed from fragments that have been passed along the generations. When trauma is cultural as well as personal, it becomes even more invisible, as each generation’s attempts at coping push the pain further below the surface. Consequently, that pain becomes increasingly ineffable, haunting succeeding generations. In each story the contributors offer, there emerges the theme of difference, a difference that turns back on itself and makes an accusation. Themes of knowing and unknowing show the terrible toll that trauma takes when there is no one with whom the trauma can be acknowledged and worked through. In the face of utter lack of recognition, what might be known together becomes hidden. Our failure to speak to these unaspirated truths becomes a betrayal of self and also of others. In the case of intergenerational and cultural trauma, we betray not only our ancestors but also the future generations to come. In the face of unacknowledged trauma, this book reveals that we are confronted with the perennial choice of speaking or becoming complicit in our silence.

Through arresting narratives we meet a woman aiding refugees in sub-Saharan Africa, facing the chaos of a meaningless society and a doctor trying to stay alive during Mao's cultural revolution - individuals challenged by their societies and caught up in existential moral experiences that define what it means to be human.

Singer offers a fresh set of ideas for understanding how the global socioeconomic system insures that massive quantities of psychotropic drugs reach the poorest sectors of American society. Drugging the Poor provides a unified theoretical framework to assess how all drugs, including tobacco, heroin, alcohol, cocaine, and diverted pharmaceuticals contribute to maintaining social inequality among the wealthier and poorer social classes in American society. Singers analysis rejects conventional approaches that see tobacco or alcohol manufacturers and distributors, on the one hand, and drug cartels and mafias, on the other, as completely different entities. Instead, he shows how legal and illegal drug corporations share key features and follow the same economic principles. He also emphasizes that mixing legal and illegal drugs to self-medicate against social discrimination, poverty, and structural violence offers short-term relief, but in the long run, it functions to maintain an unjust and oppressive system. Drugging the Poor actively challenges the assumption that how things are is how they always have been or how they need to be.