(Tan 2013) Flashcards
A persistent emphasis on the negative biomedical effects of cigarette smoking effectively glosses over
the affectual-sensual and social wellbeing that smoking can enable.
Geographers and health scholars have written extensively about how smoking bans in cities function as a means of spatial purification
Thereby leading to the exclusion of smokers in some public places
Physical health being not the only important thing
Sociable atmospheres and affective intensities matter too; and these are not reducible to quantifiable indicators. In addition, an anti-essentialist approach that emphasizes not what smoking is, but what it enables, provides useful conceptual tools for theorizing smoking geographies beyond its current mould
Stigmatisation of smokers
It has been argued that public health discourses and non-smoking policies aimed at the de-normalization of smoking as an accep- table practice result in the ‘desultory, exiled status’ of smokers
One public health strategy that has been undertaken to encourage smoking cessation (as a mode of disciplining the self) is…
to engineer sensational shock-appeal messages on the deleterious effects of smoking. For instance, gruesome images of decaying bodies ravaged by carcinogenic substances in cigarettes have been an almost ubiquitous sight in many places.
Evangelistic’ health crusades are thus, not
politically innocent; they conflate medical knowledges with morality.
These crusades transmit a problematic message, that individuals are ‘morally and perhaps legally accountable’ for their health, especially if they have not adopted recommended health-related practices
It is widely recognized that smoking levels are likely to be higher among
Socially disadvantaged groups of people living in less privileged neighbourhoods.
Public health discourses tend to cement perceptions of smokers as…
Public health discourses tend to cement percep- tions of smokers as weak-willed, selfish, dirty, uncouth.
Bayer (2008) contends that the temporary stigmatization of smokers as irrational and unloving of the self is ethically acceptable if it were instrumental in recuperating ‘pathological’ lifestyle choices.
Methodology
Conducted informal, semi-structured, largely face-to-face interviews with about 66 self-identified young adult smokers aged 18–29 years old from September 2011 to February 2012.
In Singapore:
About seven Singaporeans die prematurely from smoking- related diseases each day.
Smoking-related diseases, including cancer, heart disease, stroke and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), also known as Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (COLD), are the nation’s top killers.
The social cost of smoking in 1997 ranged from S$673 to S$839 million.
Whereas the adverse effects of other deviant bodies (for example, obese bodies) are better contained within bodily bound- aries or at least, within a community, smokers are allegedly jeopardizing public health interests by
Assaulting non-smokers with their secondhand smoke.
Anecdotes
Where I smoke, it is a space for mediating.
It’s personal space and time for relaxation.
Smoking releases me from constant tension at work.
Smoking is thus, commonly perceived as an antidote to emo- tionally strenuous spaces: ‘Whenever I am tired or stressed, a cigarette is the only place that I want to go to for relief’
