Abstracts of Papers
Michael Funk:
Vampires and Crackheads: Drug Demons in American History and Culture
The paper attempts to explore the stigmatizing visions associated with
illegal drugs, drug use and addiction in modern America culture.
It will provide an overview over the recurring phenomena of drug scares
and anti-drug crusades throughout the 20th century, which drew on a
staggering array of social ills and human troubles. Special attention will be
given to the crack scare of the late 1980s, addressing some of the ideologies
involved in the depiction of certain substances and their consumers as the evil
products of alien value systems, in many fashions presenting the notion of an
"American nightmare". The regressive social policies and the moralist agenda
of the Reagan era were absolutely crucial to staging and legitimizing the
"war on drugs", one of the great moral panics of the postwar years. Deriving
from the broader project of an M.A. thesis, the paper will hardly be able to give
a comprehensive insight into the complex issues of modern drug regulation and
oppression in the United States. It might, however, serve as an introduction into
the conflicting nature of such policies and the development of a public dialogue
on behavior, deviance and discipline.
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