Deviant Drinking as Disease: Alcoholism as a Social Accomplishment

This becomes particularly likely when the effects Zola describes are defi ned as negative rather than positive. The label “sick,” although free from the opprobrium and implied culpability of “criminal,” nevertheless involves a clearly disvalued moral condition, a deviation from “health, and a threat to the on-going network of interaction” ( Parsons, 1951 ). This common moral dimension provides the foundation for the historical shift from one system of social control (the church and state) increasingly to another (science and medicine).