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The object of this article is not to study the representations, the functions or the problems of alcohol amongst alcoholics, but to study the representations and the functions of alcoholism in the social construction of «good drinking». The study was carried out amongst a sample from the middle and the upper classes using an in-depth, semi-directive interview. The thematic analysis revealed three types of representation of alcoholism: the medical-psychological approach, the symbolic-phenomenological approach and the moral-social approach. It appears that each approach contributes to the cognitive and normative elaboration of «good drinking»; the analysis suggests moreover that it is the moral-social representation wich is the most efficient in terms of slowing down consommation.

Medical accession of the subject The classical questions of the relationship between body and mind and of the effects of the environment on health are raised in a particular way today, in view of their connection to the question of the relationship between the individual and society. We undertake to demonstrate this through the way in which the experience of illness has become a privileged moment in the formation of the individual as subject. Indeed, this experience refers to the assertion of individual autonomy. Thus today, against medicine and against society, the subject will want to constitute himself, but will only be able to do so through recourse to professional knowledge and pratices, and by receiving support from social norms and institutions, lt is through the mediation of areas of knowledge, of catagories and of organisations that the formation of the subject occurs, and through the various institutional and conceptual mediations there is a transverse axis, namely the concept of autonomy, which plays a determinant expressive and normative role.

This article presents an evaluation of the implementation of a computerized medical records System in four Quebec hospitals (Canada). We discuss the development and in situ experimentation of this innovation in the light of the Actants' Network Theory. The focus of the evaluation is mainly directed at task distribution that operates within the network linking humans and non-humans. We describe in detail three prevailing «problematizations» which exist among administrators, nurses and physicians, and which affected the development of the computerized medical records System, its implementation in health care units and its integration within clinical work. Our aim is to illustrate, in empirical terms, the heuristic potential of the Actants' Network Theory, while at the same time bringing to light important design and experimentation issues in the implementation of computerized Systems.