In April 2026, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order fast-tracking access to psilocybin and ibogaine for the treatment of serious mental illness. This follows decades in which psychedelics had been vilified as a group of drugs entirely lacking in therapeutic potential, associated with counter-cultural groups such as hippies, and whose use was both criminalised and widely stigmatised. Our central questions are: How have the substances, practices, understandings and relationships that comprise psychedelic use developed, and shifted, over time? And how might we best understand the overall structure and dynamics of such changes? We argue that the recent psychedelic renaissance cannot be understood as the simple ‘discovery’ of a therapeutic potential that previously lay dormant in the substances themselves. It is better grasped as a part-process of longer-term informalisation processes, bound up with shifting balances of power between established and outsider groups and with the changing behavioural and emotional standards – the social canons – through which psychedelic use has become refigured. Drawing on the figurational sociology of Norbert Elias and relational work on substance use and health, we trace the shift in psychedelics from counter-cultural sacrament to therapy and technology of the self. Through dialogue with a multimodal, multi-source evidential base, we develop the concept of ‘pharmaceuticalisation from below’ to characterise both the contemporary uptake of psychedelics and the broader figurational dynamics this expresses.
In this critical case study, we explored invisible labor, work that is essential but essentially unrecognized, within a successful community college–university transfer partnership selected for its equitable characteristics. Our analysis of semi-structured interviews with eight partnership contributors revealed five distinct but connected invisible labor categories: orienting to transfer students, sharing individual resources, sharing institutional resources, communicating and coordinating, and cultivating a transfer-receptive culture. Study findings suggested that invisible labor in this context is categorically messy, subjective, highly relational, and instrumental in establishing and maintaining a successful coequitable transfer partnership. We concluded with implications for practice in the form of questions for readers, with remarks drawn from our data analysis. We strongly encourage readers to respond to these questions within their local contexts as they work to create and sustain coequitable transfer partnerships.
در این مطالعه موردی انتقادی، به بررسی کار نامرئی، یعنی کاری که اساسی اما اساساً نادیده گرفته شده است، در چارچوب یک مشارکت موفق انتقال از کالج جامعه به دانشگاه که به دلیل ویژگی‌های عدالت‌محور خود انتخاب شده بود، پرداختیم. تحلیل ما از مصاحبه‌های نیمه‌ساختاریافته با هشت نفر از مشارکت‌کنندگان در این همکاری، پنج دسته متمایز اما مرتبط از کار نامرئی را آشکار ساخت: جهت‌دهی به دانشجویان انتقالی، به اشتراک‌گذاری منابع فردی، به اشتراک‌گذاری منابع نهادی، ارتباط و هماهنگی، و پرورش فرهنگ پذیرای انتقال. یافته‌های پژوهش نشان داد که کار نامرئی در این زمینه به طور دسته‌بندی‌شده‌ای پیچیده، ذهنی، به شدت رابطه‌محور و نقش‌آفرین در ایجاد و حفظ یک مشارکت موفق و هم‌تراز انتقال است. در پایان، پیامدهای عملی این پژوهش به صورت پرسش‌هایی برای خوانندگان ارائه شد که اظهارنظرهایی برگرفته از تحلیل داده‌ها را نیز در بر می‌گیرد. ما به شدت خوانندگان را تشویق می‌کنیم که در زمینه‌های محلی خود به این پرسش‌ها پاسخ دهند، در حالی که برای ایجاد و حفظ مشارکت‌های انتقال هم‌تراز تلاش می‌کنند.
