Whither Tobacco Studies?

Abstract

In recent years, tobacco research has become an increasingly politicized field, with ‘legitimate’ research on this topic expected to further the goals of tobacco control. This paper presents an overview of the state of field of social science studies on tobacco and critiques the growing polarity evident in scholarship on this topic. Moving beyond mainstream public health perspectives, I outline a body of research that challenges dominant understandings of tobacco use and tobacco control. This research can be classified into three main categories: studies that interrogate conceptions of why people smoke, those that examine the impacts of tobacco control policy on smokers, and studies embracing intellectual and philosophical perspectives (especially phenomenology and social constructionism) that place them outside of a public health frame. I end with a broader discussion of the growing instrumentalization of social science research and the need to resist prescriptions that seek to dictate the appropriate form and content of scholarly work.

Towards a Critical Anthropology of Smoking: Exploring the Consequences of Tobacco Control

“…These accounts illustrate the ways in which cigarettes may appear as "friends," and how smokers can feel themselves constituted in some way by their smoking. However, researchers who acknowledge these attractive, pleasurable aspects of smoking increasingly run the risk of being seen as irresponsible (Bell, 2013;Dennis, in press). …”

“…While the industry appropriation of tobacco research remains a vexing issue, as Bell (2013, p. 39) has recently observed, "demanding that all researchers take an explicitly anti-tobacco stance because of the nefarious uses to which their work may otherwise be put by the tobacco industry amounts to a gag order." Moreover, appropriations may come from a variety of sources, and numerous social scientists have had their work used to support governmentfunded initiatives or interventions which they feel are misguided or actively harmful (Bell, 2013).…”

“…1 This is not to suggest that anthropological approaches are indubitably right, somehow unentailed, or outside the power/knowledge nexus. Indeed, it is increasingly common for anthropologists conducting research on tobacco to condemn traditional ethnographic approaches that seek to understand tobacco use on its own terms (see Bell, 2013).…”

Smoke gets in your eyes: what is sociological about cigarettes?

“…Tobacco consumption has a deleterious impact on health, particularly for the poorest and, in consequence, the influence and impact of a casuistical tobacco industry needs to be combatted. Bell (2013) highlights, however, that the application of social sciences, like sociology, for the ends of public health is problematic. Bell points to research strands on tobacco use that emphasize the agency and will rather than the passivity of smokers (eg Greaves 1996, Katainen 2006, the complex embodiments inherent to the smoking experience (eg Dennis 2006(eg Dennis , 2011 and how tobacco control can work upon and exacerbate divisions of class and gender (eg Thompson, Pearce and Barnett 2007).…”

Challenging key assumptions embedded in Health Canada’s cigarette packaging legislation: Findings from in situ interviews with smokers in Vancouver

“…Informed by post-structuralist and phenomenological perspectives, and with lived experience of smoking, 11 we have emphasized the need for reflexivity within tobacco control about the reasons people smoke, and the barriers they face with regard to cessation. [12][13][14] Through a content analysis of the labels mandated for use in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as those proposed for the United States, we have found considerable "discursive ambiguity" in terms of how a viewer might interpret messages about the physical effects of smoking, the social identities of smokers, the need to protect others from smoke, and smoking as an addiction. 15 In addition to analyzing the labels, we conducted in situ interviews with 245 smokers in Vancouver, Canada; Canberra, Australia; Liverpool, England and San Francisco, USA in conjunction with colleagues in these countries.…”