Cameron LeViere | Beloit College (original) (raw)

Papers by Cameron LeViere

Though the subculture surrounding punk music is not new to the anthropological lens, there has b... more Though the subculture surrounding punk music is not new to the anthropological lens, there has been some confusion over how to treat the subculture as an object: scholars have variously approached it with a focus on aesthetics or style, or simply attempted to grant the term “subculture” substantial analytical purchase. In this paper, I situate my own ethnographic research within Pittsburgh’s do-it-yourself punk community in Bourdieuvian terms and argue that the term used by members of the punk community themselves—“scene”—is essentially synonymous with Bourdieu’s conception of a field. This is to say that the practices of the punk subculture operate along functionalist terms in order to maintain economic and cultural autonomy from more mainstream musical institutions. My analysis focuses on the discursive construction of “punkness,” a sense of punk authenticity accrued through successful subcultural performance which serves to extend the structural autonomy of the punk scene to identity and experience so as to make the boundary between mainstream culture and the punk subculture that much more impermeable. I conclude by discussing the idea that this conception of a subculture or scene as a field allows for the possibility that efficiently functional structures can arise largely without intention, that it is formed through practice and a relationship with other fields.

In this paper, I address the lack of a coherent or useful cross-disciplinary understanding of “ad... more In this paper, I address the lack of a coherent or useful cross-disciplinary understanding of “addiction” as a category. I first contextualize the essentialization of addiction within history, suggesting that the concept arose in a period in which ascribing deviancy to individual bodies was rendered socially useful. I then address the handling of addiction within various disciplinary communities, arguing that it has been treated as a singular, atemporal object with discrete boundaries and some sole underlying cause. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s practice theory, I propose a shift away from this sort of understanding, instead reframing addiction as a particular sort of social patterning which involves time-based strategy not entirely separate from social behavior more generally (that is, social behavior which is not considered “deviant”). I then apply this new approach to thinking about addiction to two examples (the work of sociologist Alfred R. Lindesmith and a memoir by former heroin addict Laura Lang), concluding that it is imperative that addiction researchers be aware when they are making an epistemic fallacy: that is, reifying something as an object which might better be regarded as something else entirely.

Though a great deal of research has been done on the health effects of smoking, the habit has go... more Though a great deal of research has been done on the health effects of smoking, the habit has gone largely unexamined by more qualitative perspectives such as that provided by anthropology. During the fall of 2011, I conducted ethnographic research among Beloit College’s student smoking population, employing the usual methods of participant-observation and interviews. This paper examines the informal exchange of cigarettes, a practice known as “bumming,” within the context of a larger system which I refer to as the “cigarette economy.” Through the lens of economic anthropology, I attempt to explain the economic behavior of smokers and situate the cigarette economy in relation to common understandings of the gift economy. I conclude that students exchange cigarettes in a manner similar to that of a gift economy, using these seemingly altruistic exchanges to create social relations, but also to maintain security in their access to cigarettes during the financial instability which is frequently experienced by college students. By injecting cigarettes into the smoking community when they are affluent, smokers earn social capital and good standing with other smokers which they can draw from to support their habit during times of economic hardship. In this way, they exhibit calculative self-interest while maintaining an appearance of generosity. This represents one facet of smoking culture, and this paper recommends more extensive ethnographic research on such a prevalent phenomenon as tobacco consumption by other subfields of anthropology.