Abstract
Afterwards, the historical developments and alterations of the scene and its descriptive and internal features from the mid- to late 1970s until the point in time of the data collection in the spring and early summer of 2004 are depicted and explained. Five distinct historical eras are identified, and the heroin using trend at the time of the interviews and its possible future course is depicted.
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Notes
- 1.
Cf. Stallwitz (2007, p. 261).
- 2.
In his book ‘A Place in the Sun. Shetland and Oil’, about the impact the implementation of the major oil terminal Sullom Voe in the mid- to late 1970s had on the island’s culture, the Shetland writer Jonathan Wills depicts what he calls a ‘cultural panic’. He describes a commonly assumed threat to the local way of life and speech, the ‘ethnic treasury’, going out from the large numbers of strangers coming to the island as oil workers since the starting up of Sullom Voe. Since these people have entered the island via its south mouth, they are called ‘soothmoothers’ (1991, p. 33). The impression is conveyed that the anxiety for the ethnic treasury has been transferred from the overall Shetland culture to the specific subculture of the island heroin scene.
- 3.
In an investigation about aboriginal women survivors of sexual abuse, McEvoy and Daniluk define community-mindedness ‘the sense of understanding that, individual actions, both positive and negative, reflect on the entire community’ (1995); hence, exclusively referring to the social caring aspect of the dichotomous conception employed in this study.
- 4.
Alfred Adler speaks about a community spirit (Gemeinschaftsgefühl) as an attitude leading to a ‘we’, which refers to the ability and preparedness to cooperate with other people regarding the common weal (1973). With an increasing sense of community, the degree of social control also intensifies, since due to the strong focus on the common good, everything that does not correspond to and thus endangers the corporate feeling is rejected and regarded as deviant. The definition of community-mindedness as used in this study also contains these two sides, community spirit and social control.
- 5.
As stated by a Shetland journalist, a newspaper story about socially or legally transgressing behaviour in Shetland only becomes interesting for locals to read when the persons involved are identifiable (Stallwitz 2007). Since ‘everyone knows everyone’, having one’s name in the paper means the whole of Shetland will be informed virtually immediately.
- 6.
Name changed.
References
Adler, A. (1973). Der Sinn des Lebens. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhkramp. (Original: 1933).
McEvoy, M., & Daniluk, J. (1995). Wounds to the soul: The experiences of aboriginal women survivors of sexual abuse. Canadian Psychology, 36(3), 221–235.
Stallwitz, A. (2007). Heroin use in Shetland from the perspective of different local professionals. Therapeutic Communities, 28(3), 256–272.
Wills, J. (1991). A place in the sun: Shetland and oil. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing Company.
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Stallwitz, A. (2012). The Internal Structure of the Heroin Scene in Shetland. In: The Role of Community-Mindedness in the Self-Regulation of Drug Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3861-4_7
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