Free essay on Ethnography Study: Cultural Domains (Drug Abuse among the Youth)

Different cultural values can nurture people's attitudes about substance abuse. It is evident from many studies that cultural values because of tradition influence the beliefs and attitudes of adolescents thereby influencing their behaviors due to health risks (Arrazola et al., 2016). The notable cultural themes include but not limited to respecto, machismo, fatalism, and familism are the main cultural values that determine the drug abuse among various populations. Cultural domains have the propensity of shaping people's attitudes towards substance and the experimentation with drug use. The cultural domains in this regard include familism, showing respect to others based on race, authority, or age, and fatalism. Fatalism refers to the belief or the personality that one's destiny is beyond their control. It is worth noting that fatalism is more of a personality than a cultural trait, but most cultures tend to promote the fatalist beliefs, as such, they believe, tend to promote interdependence. The fatalist construct is much similar to the external locus of control, which refers to people's outlook based on other perception. Respect then refers based on age, gender, and authority determines an individual's inclination towards certain habits such as violence and drug abuse. Essentially, adolescents that uphold respect tend to have a lower affinity towards drug abuse. The cultural values have the propensity of influencing drug abuse among the youth or adolescents.

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Familism refers to the cultural identity that involves a certain people or individuals' strong attachment or absolute identification with the extended or the nuclear family. Additionally, the individuals have strong sense of reciprocity, solidarity, and loyalty towards each other or towards the members of the family. It is worth noting that the extended families include adopted uncles, aunts, and cousins who are not necessarily biological in nature or relations. Close friends are also part of the extended family. Familism is essentially a formidable protective factor for both deviant behavior and drug abuse among the adolescents. Closer ties with familism improve the probability of a person inclination towards drug use. Additionally, family members who tend to have a negative attitude towards smoking or marijuana use tend to become regular smokers who perceive marijuana positively.

Respeto refers to the norm of showing respect to other people authority, gender, and age. In essence, it is a principle that emphasizes a parent's duty towards the child and more often a child's absolute respect towards the parent. The child ahs the responsibility and the absolute duty of respecting or showing respect to the portent's advice. Most children, mostly in the Hispanic and African American settings, respect the advice given by the parents. Adolescents who respect their parents or the advice given by the parents tend to have lower inclination towards drug abuse. The risk of smoking or alcoholism is also lower among the children or adolescents who heed their parents' advice (Geramian et al., 2014). On the other hand, the children who do not respect the advice given by the parents or the ones who do not seek much advice tend to have more affinity towards alcoholism and drug abuse. Parents who advise against drug abuse tend to direct their children in the desired direction. Notably, respecto is a risk factor when children tend to respect or admire parents or adults who use or abuse drugs. Adolescents to the youth tend to imitate the behavior by such parents and such certainly leads to increased abuse of drugs.

The concept of gender or the concept of dividing roles based on sex is known as Machismo in the Hispanic community. In the conventional or the traditional setting, most communities allocated duties and responsibilities based on gender and such have a great influence drug use or abuse among the youth or the adolescents. The principle of Machismo presents men as hyper-superior in terms of dominance, facing the enemy with courage, provisions of protection, guarding the family honor, and responsibility. Additionally, the principle represents both negative and positive aspects of the female behavior. In respect to drug abuse, the traditional female role (the caretaker role) has lower inclination towards alcohol or drug abuse. Normally, the imbibing of alcohol or abuse of drugs depicts negative moral character on the females. Most communities perceive substance abuse is rebellious trait that is in line with the male character (Hojjat et al., 2016). The females who endorse the traditional way of life tend to have lower drug abuse rates. Adolescents who endorse that traditional way of life also tend to engage less in drug abuse since they consider such behavior rebellious and reproductive. The boy may engage in such, but the girls will not since the perception is that the behavior is an unacceptable. The gender differences play a key role in substance abuse.

Finally, fatalism also affects the rates or the degree of drug abuse among the adolescents. Fatalism refers to the belief or the personality that one's destiny is beyond their control. It is worth noting that fatalism is more of a personality than a cultural trait, but most cultures tend to promote the fatalist beliefs, as such, they believe, tend to promote interdependence. The fatalist construct is much similar to the external locus of control, which refers to people's outlook based on other perception (Conway et al., 2016). It is worth noting that fatalism has little effect in determining substance abuse among multicultural communities.

References

Arrazola, R. A., Singh, T., Corey, C. G., Husten, C. G., Neff, L. J., Apelberg, B. J., McAfee, T. (2015). Tobacco use among middle and high school students-United States, 2011-2014. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report, 64(14), 381-385.

Conway, K. P., Swendsen, J., Husky, M. M., He, J. P., & Merikangas, K. R. (2016). Association of lifetime mental disorders and subsequent alcohol and illicit drug use: results from the National Comorbidity Survey-Adolescent Supplement. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 55(4), 280-288.

Geramian, N., Gharaat, L., Taheri, S. A., Mohebpour, F., Nahvizadeh, M., Farajzadegan, Z., & Heidari, K. (2014). Development of a questionnaire to assess drug abuse among high school students of Isfahan province, Iran: An action research. International Journal of Preventive Medicine, 5(Suppl 2), S146. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4475999/

Hojjat, S. K., Golmakani, E., Khalili, M. N., Chenarani, M. S., Hamidi, M., Akaberi, A., & Ardani, A. R. (2016). The effectiveness of group assertiveness training on happiness in rural adolescent females with substance abusing parents. Global journal of health science, 8(2), 156. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092814/