Learning to Smoke

Learning to Smoke Tobacco Use in the West

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Hardback (08 Jul 2003)

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Publisher's Synopsis

Why do people smoke? Taking a unique approach to this question, Jason Hughes moves beyond the usual focus on biological addiction that dominates news coverage and public health studies and invites us to reconsider how social and personal understandings of smoking crucially affect the way people experience it. Learning to Smoke examines the diverse sociological and cultural processes that have compelled people to smoke since the practice was first introduced to the West during the sixteenth century.

Hughes traces the transformations of tobacco and its use over time, from its role as a hallucinogen in Native American shamanistic ritual to its use as a prophylactic against the plague and a cure for cancer by early Europeans, and finally to the current view of smoking as a global pandemic. He then analyzes tobacco from the perspective of the individual user, exploring how its consumption relates to issues of identity and life changes. Comparing sociocultural and personal experiences, Hughes ultimately asks what the patterns of tobacco use mean for the clinical treatment of smokers and for public policy on smoking. Pointing the way, then, to a more learned and sophisticated understanding of tobacco use, this study will prove to be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of smoking and the sociology of addiction.

Book information

ISBN: 9780226359106
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Imprint: The University of Chicago Press
Pub date:
Edition: 1
DEWEY: 613.8509
DEWEY edition: 21
Language: English
Number of pages: 201
Weight: 472g
Height: 165mm
Width: 338mm
Spine width: 22mm