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This paper presents a discussion on how Anthropology looks at the use of drugs and the people who use them, tracing a short genealogy of the sociocultural perspective that a large part of the anthropologists who study the subject are affiliated with, as opposed to other forms of understanding the phenomenon, closer to pharmacological determinism. Medical Anthropology's framework and critical stance are highlighted, arguing that deconstructionism and criticism of medicalization and pathologization can and should be applied to the study of drugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My option in studying objects never, or almost never, addressed by Brazilian Anthropology calls for questioning both the definition of object and the locus of research, and for continued attention to two dimensions of the ethnographic practice. The first is about interactions between reason and emotion in the definition of our research agendas. The second is the concern with the effects on the anthropological perspective when alterity is sidelined against the growing number of auto-ethnographies. In this paper, I address these questions on the basis of four fieldwork experiences of my professional trajectory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]