Evil as indexical: The implicit objective status of guns and illegal drugs

We use G.H. Mead's perspective on the meaning of social objects; and his th eory of the past and Harold Garfinkel's application of indexicality to desc ribe how people respond to social objects as evil. Mead's notion of an impl ied objective past illuminates how social actors not only connect objects t o past evils but also invoke an objective past to index evil in the future. Focusing on guns and illegal drugs, we maintain that responses to each dra w on conceptions of the past in ways that attempt to make Their connection to evil in the past and future justifiable. Such responses create meaningfu l categories that actors then use to anticipate future responses to objects . We note that while people appear to be comfortable using pasts and indexi cal expressions to define Schedule I drugs as evil in themselves, the attem pt to make guns into evil objects has met with strong resistance and requir es elaborate contextualization.