This week, Dubitatio is proud to announce to you its latest and most ambitious foray up to date- "The Scientific". In this section, we will focus on literature reviews of the most famous research articles published so that you too can understand their implications on the human psyche and thought and on the scientific community. Following that, I have included a question at the end to garner your view on the topic discussed.
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Why Does Julian Garcia have a Drinking Problem? - Singer et Al
Citation: Singer, M et al. “Why does Juan García have a drinking problem? The perspective of critical medical anthropology.” Medical anthropology vol. 14,1 (1992): 77-108. doi:10.1080/01459740.1992.9966067
Þ Medical Anthropologists study health through a variety of perspectives
Þ Singer’s paper uses the critical medical anthropology (CMA) perspective to investigate the drinking problems of a Puerto Rican man named Juan Garcia
Þ CMA considers ethnicity to be a variable that affects that must be understood in the context of internal class stratification and international relations; that is what the authors argue Garcia’s drinking problem must be studied in the context of.
Why CMA and Why Alcoholism?
Þ Alcoholism, though not considered to be a disease now and not looked upon with the same stigma as it was 100 years ago, represents out-of-control behaviour of an individual that represents the ingestion of a toxic substance into one’s body
Þ Recent models emphasize upon alcoholism being an individual problem. But the patterns across ethnic communities in alcohol abuse suggest otherwise about this disease.
Þ The paper focuses on individual interviews but then generalizes them to the macro level
Criticisms of Critical Medical Anthropology
Þ It is not suited to the applied branch of medical anthropology
Þ It does not foster scientific research
Þ It overlooks the lived experience of individuals
Þ It does not effectively demonstrate the links between the micro and macro levels
Þ It is a passing trend that relies on anthropology’s fickle tendencies to follow fashion
What did making alcoholism a disease achieve?
Þ Offered a plausible solution to the irrationality behind drinking behaviour
Þ Guaranteed social status as well as a livelihood to a wide array of individuals inside and outside the field of biomedicine
Þ Limited the growing burden on the criminal justice system of alcoholics
Who was Juan Garcia?
Þ Was born in Puerto Rico in 1909
Þ Deeply resented his father because he was the product of an adulterous relationship
Þ Mother died at age 8
Þ Raised by aunt and when father died, he was raised by his father’s wife
Þ Hated his father so much that he named himself after his mother Garcia
Þ Romantically involved with cousin named Zoraida who had been deserted by her husband with a child
Þ Lived with her on plot of land for several years in a wooden shack
Þ Then Zoraida’s husband came and took his daughter away- Juan’s social standing meant he could do nothing about it
Þ 19 children- most of them died in infancy so they were given a prophecy to cross the waters and go to U.S.A
Þ Due to being monolingual in Spanish and illiterate he could only get menial labour at first- he then became janitor at an appliance factory and then a draftsman
Þ At age of 50 he lost his job when the appliance factory moved out of state
Þ Fell in alcoholism and died
An Individualistic Look at Juan Garcia
Þ Juan was an insecure, emotionally unstable individual who used alcohol as a crutch to support himself during times of adversity
Þ His destructive patterns started out with his infantile hatred towards his adulterous father
Þ A wider perspective would place Juan back into the environment in which he was faced by these difficulties to draw generalizable inferences from his life through CMA
CMA Perspective of Juan Garcia
Þ When Columbus first arrived in Puerto Rico in 1493, the tribes drank alcohol, but they didn’t suffer from alcoholism
Þ Alcohol was reserved for ritual purposes where adults would get intoxicated- at other times, alcohol consumption was non-disruptive
Þ Columbus quickly noticed that the Arawak tribes did not have much in terms of military might due to their lack of metal weapons- they were easily subjugated
Þ Columbus initially used the natives to mine gold- when that was exhausted, he used the natives to produce sugar on the land
Þ Alcoholism spread through the natives for two main reasons:
a) Alcohol was a daily part of the lives of the Spanish settlers who arrived in Puerto Rico- there was a spread of culture to the remaining natives on the land
b) The natives were paid for their work in batches of rum for sustenance
Þ When the U.S.A acquired Puerto Rico in 1898, 91% of the land was owned by natives for farming purposes. A freeze on credit, a devaluation of the peso, and a fix on land prices meant many Puerto Ricans had to take out extravagant loans to upgrade their equipment. Upon a failure to pay back the loans, the banks foreclosed on their land. Consequently, by 1926, 80% of Puerto Ricans were landless.
Þ Due to becoming landless, the Puerto Ricans were driven to become part of the working class- Accordingly, in line with Marx’s theories, they went off to considering work to be outside of their being and embraced the character of being alienated with the capitalist regime around them- a character who drinks alcohol to provide themselves of respite from the back-breaking work.
Þ Alcohol consumption was driven to become a symbol of the masculinity in Puerto Rico- Due to the disproportionately high number of males in the workforce, females became subservient symbols to males and alcoholism was seen as an enforcer of this status quo.
Þ Three hurricanes between 1928 and 1932 destroyed the country’s infrastructure- Operation Bootstrap shifted Puerto Rican taxes to the Ministry of Interior and the taxes were transferred to the Puerto Rican treasury. However, the program was severely curtailed, and infrastructure sold off to capitalist businesses due to the Red Scare.
Þ The industrialization brought about by Operation Bootstrap affected the Puerto Rican economy because 50% of created jobs went to women. Displaced men were seen as a surplus and an unwanted excess
Þ Although the Garcia family had their individual reason for shifting to the USA, their reason and the shaman’s advice were precipitated by this socioeconomic situation around them-
Þ When Puerto Rican men shifted to the U.S.A, they adopted US drinking behaviours alongside their own- this meant they drank during the weekdays and during the weekend:
a) Drinking by now had been deeply ingratiated into the Puerto Rican mind- a lack of the ability to drink was seen as a symbol of homosexuality
b) There was a high density of bars established in the Puerto Rican areas of America
c) Advertisements and television promoted alcohol consumption
d) Restructuralisation
Þ Simultaneously, the Puerto Ricans adopted the work ethic mindset where their greatest fear was that of unemployment- their alcohol consumption only evolved into a problem when they were unemployed- as can be observed in Garcia’s case- This trend has been seen in in unemployment years where cirrhosis mortality rates rise within two-three years of the recession.
Þ Unemployment meant that Juan’s dream of becoming manly had been trimmed. He only had the option of remaining machismo, which in his mind meant hard drinking- this brought about his untimely death.
Þ Data obtained from interviews of Puerto Rican households for the research study have found that Juan’s story, though having its own peculiar twists and turns largely collated with what researchers discovered was commonplace for all Puerto Rican males.
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