Why do so many people feel compelled to drink alcohol or take drugs? And why do so many men drink and so many women refrain? Using ideas from social anthropology, this book attempts to provide a novel answer to these questions. The introduction surveys both gender and addiction. It points out that we cannot say what men or women are really like, in any culturally innocent sense, for gender is always, even in the realm of biology, a cultural matter.

Women and Alcohol: The Emergence of a Risk Group, B. Thom - The Police, Gender and the Culture of Drug Use and Addiction, M. Young - Symptoms, Struggles and Functions: What Does the Overdose Represent?, R. Littlewood - Whisky, Women and the Scottish Drink Problem, S. Macdonald - Gender, Ethnicity and Alcohol in the Former Soviet Union, T. Dragadze

Maryon McDonald Cambridge University