Drugs and drug addiction in the representations of parish priests and doctors

Abstract

This article describes research work, the objective of which was to analyse the social phenomenon of drug-taking and drug addiction in two important groups active in the social control of this phenomenon: parish priests and doctors. The study was based on the socio-psychological theory of social representations, these being operationalized by means of a composite of various concepts (anchorings, objectivation and social attitudes) and techniques (qualitative and quantitative). Using Moscovici's analytical typology for guidance, the aim of the research was to observe the most rigid or most polemical status of the social representations of drugs in these two groups. The conclusions show that the object drug configures as a hegemonic representation both in parish priests and doctors, although one did observe a number of more ambivalent representational nuances which were strictly limited to the doctor group.