ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of some of the key currents relevant to the study of drugs, linking them to the wider intellectual history of the discipline. In doing so, our principal focus in this chapter is on socio-cultural anthropology. We begin the chapter with a look at a theoretical toolkit that anthropologists can apply in the study of drugs. We turn at the end of the chapter to ethnography, the principal methodological approach that anthropologists use, and a key part of the strength of anthropology in researching drugs.
