“You have to be street smart”: Street capital and the social organisation of risk among people who inject drugs in Norway

Abstract

This study explores the social organisation of risk among injecting drug users in Norway. Based on qualitative interviews with 80 people who regularly injected drugs, recruited from harm reduction services in five Norwegian cities, the analysis illustrates how users embody various forms of capital in order to mitigate harm. These forms of capital work along three axes that we conceptualise as sociocultural, injecting and structural capital. First, the sociocultural capital highlights how users accounted for a field-specific competence that enabled them to evaluate the trustworthiness of drug dealers, and the quality and purity of the drugs they bought. Second, the injecting capital illustrates the drug-related competence among users, and how they managed their drug use in certain ways to minimise harm. Third, structural capital emphasises how users learned to benefit from various low-threshold agencies and the welfare state. Together, these forms of risk capital illustrate the subtle, and often neglected, forms of capital embedded within marginalised populations and how they ‘do’ harm reduction in their everyday interactions and drug use. If interventions within this population are to succeed, there is need for a greater awareness of such forms of capital and how these are employed within the social environments in which drug-related risks are organised.