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Essay on Alcoholics- Social Deviance
From the positivist approach, alcoholism is real. That is, there is a unitary or diverse list of symptoms, signs, and behaviors that differentiate alcoholics from nonalcoholics and from other drinkers. Through observation and research, positivists maintain that the conditions or causes of alcoholism will be discovered. Failure to discover etiology is always a failure on the researchers' part because their methods are not sophisticated or valid. A positivist explanation for the failure to discover the causes of alcoholism would stress that alcoholism is a complex phenomenon resulting from biological, psychological, and sociological factors. With continued energy and effort, positivists maintain, we will some day discover the causes of this "affliction."
Interactionist/subjectivist approaches emphasize that deviance, in this case "alcoholism," is a relative phenomenon that is constructed in given situations and in given historical time frames by participants. "Alcoholism" is a historical and political accomplishment. For interactionists, "alcoholism" is a category, label, or imputation that is made about or attached to persons by others. It goes without saying that there are "alcoholics." Certain people are so labeled every day. But it does not necessarily follow that there is an alcoholism entity. The present study has assumed that "alcoholism" is a term referring to a constellation or configuration of behaviors which, when manifested by an individual, render him a likely candidate for the label "alcoholic.
From an interactionist perspective, "alcoholism" is what it is taken to be by given people in given situations. The meaning of phenomena from this perspective is a consequence of the definitions and meanings that are attached to them by actors. Alcoholism exists in our language and in our minds, but not in the objective world around us. Alcoholism' and 'becoming an alcoholic' are very much what people take them to be when they employ such notions in the course of their everyday lives......
