Thesis
How can I become a person?: The paradoxical nature of the ideal self with whoonga addiction in South Africa
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
12/2015
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/101188
Abstract
Whoonga is an emergent drug mixture in South Africa purported to contain marijuana, heroin, and antiretroviral (ARV) medications and is continuing to grow exponentially. Due to the dearth of research conducted on the whoonga-using population as well as the South African media's proliferation of gross misinformation, whoonga addicts are feared, stigmatized, and ostracized. Through ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the summer of 2014, it was discovered that South African whoonga addicts and the nondrug-using population had divergent understandings of what it meant to be human. Drawing from the theoretical perspectives of Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben, and Louis Althusser, the central argument of this thesis is that the mystery of whoonga represents a metaphor for the paradoxical nature of the self, the field, and what it means to be human. Thus, whoonga in South Africa is not a drug problem concerning a mysterious concoction, nor about the problems associated with addiction, but rather a problem of being human and the struggle to remain human.
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Details
- Title
- How can I become a person?
- Creators
- Jason Chung
- Contributors
- Julia Cassaniti (Chair)Marsha Bogar Quinlan (Committee Member) - Washington State University, Anthropology, Department ofJennifer Schwartz (Committee Member) - Washington State University, Sociology, Department of
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Anthropology, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; [Pullman, Washington] :
- Number of pages
- 118
- Identifiers
- 99900525274001842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis