Global Health & Humanities Book Talk Series - Beyond the Substance: Psychedelics and the Challenge of Medical Research and Drug Policy
Speaker: Dr. Ido Hartogsohn
Discussant: Prof. Gordon Mathews
Dr. Alex Gearin
Moderator: Dr. Priscilla Song
Date: Monday 10 January 2022
Time: 5:00 p.m. Hong Kong (9:00 a.m. London / 11:00 a.m. Tel Aviv / 8:00 p.m. Sydney)
Delivery: via Zoom (zoom session details will be sent prior to the event after registration)
Abstract:
Medical science and drug policy approaches have often been based on essentialist definitions of drug action and dichotomous distinctions between licit drugs and drugs of abuse. In recent years, though, a growing awareness fo the context-dependency and socio-cultural situatedness of drug effects have opened up the prospect of rethinking medical drug research and drug policy in light of social constructivist insights into drug effects, which place the emphasis on the cruciality of set and setting (context) rather than chemical essentialism. Based on Ido Hartogsohn's American Trip: Set, Setting and the Psychedelic Experience in the 20th Century (MIT Press, 2020), the talk will use the story of mid-twentieth-century American psychedelic research and culture as a backdrop for an examination of social-constructivist insights into the context-dependency of drug effects and their implications for medical research and drug policy.
Registration: https://rb.gy/eyfbrk
