Social representations of consumption of drugs in a university context, Medellin, Colombia, 2000

Objective: To identify and characterize the social representationsof drug use in a university context. Methodology: aframework was built by collecting the contributions of symbolicinteractionism, interpretive ethnography, and textualanalysis. Data collection was performed through 27 semistructuredinterviews and 7 focus groups. Likewise, the ReadingParadigm, proposed by a cultural hermeneutics of anthropologicalnature, was used as an analysis technique. Resultsand discussion: we observed social representations such asdrug use as a socializing element facilitating social relationsand as an element that gives meaning to life by putting thesubject in a context where he or she is accepted. Conclusion:certain socially constructed forms of knowledge appear in thesignifiers of drugs. They generate, through the functions of socialrepresentations, satisfiers that make it possible, throughcommunication, to construct languages that shape the identitywithin the group and favor adaptation to the social environmentof the university.