These books take reader on a journey. This is a hackneyed notion often invoked to describe a process of inner growth or enlightenment, but in this case, journey is closer to literal and definitely embodied. Spaces and places are traversed and visited: in Fitzgerald's text, streetscapes of Melbourne and domestic interiors in a nearby regional town; in Smith's text, intoxicating site of consumption and dislocation he calls the addicted city. Les Back has suggested that one of challenges of 21st-century social research is to account for social without assassinating life contained within ([2012], p. 21). As an alcohol and other drug researcher, I cannot resist some collegial pride at liveliness of these two texts. Although full of information, they do not trade in fossil facts nor lifeless conceptions (p. 21). Before going any further, I should add that I know both authors and am mentioned in Smith's acknowledgments.Drugs and their use are central to spaces encountered in these texts, which accounts for some of their liveliness (although proximity of death is not ignored). Both authors are committed to producing effects with their writing that go beyond cognitive. Fitzgerald notes that drugs combine with bodies, they change parameters of perceptible world (p. x), and in this sense, both books act like substances they describe and explore. Smith's text even includes discographies and filmographies to enhance reader's trip. Conceptually, parameters of what is habitually referred to as alcohol and other drug use and boundaries of category of addiction are expanded to incorporate global capitalism, history of modernity, pleasures of music, experience of falling in love, and question of how we encounter world. It's a lot to take in.Given scope of journey contained in these two books, I will begin with a simple overview. This is followed by a more detailed account of content, focusing on texts' engagement with two central concepts in drug research: pathologization and risk environment. In addition to specific ideas and knowledge contained in books, they both struck me as illustrative (in a good way) of two broader issues related to project of social science, as it addresses phenomena such as drug use. These are (1) question of what counts as relevance and (2) status of new in social inquiry. These questions are addressed in second part of this review, first through Mariam Fraser's discussion of experience, relevance, and the sociological problem ([2009]); second through some recent writing about theoretical and methodological turns in feminist scholarship ([Coleman, 2014]; [Hinton & Liu, 2015]; [Hughes & Lury, 2013]).Spaces and Places of Drug UseFraming Drug Use brings together Fitzgerald's brilliant and eclectic work as a multidisciplinary alcohol and other drug researcher, drawing from more than 10 years of fieldwork in Australia among users, service providers, and policy makers. Its chapters are diverse and largely self-contained, including analyses of drug photography, cause-related alcohol marketing, neuroenablement and hope, and drugs in transitional economies. What unifies chapters is an analytical approach centered on operation of forces. While Fitzgerald focuses specifically on the contesting forces that are involved when people use drugs, his claim is that operation of forces determines human condition in general (p. 2). As subjects, we are all assemblages of forces rather than sovereign individuals. Thus, attention to forces undermines presumed qualitative difference between those subjects who are valued as normal and healthy citizens and those who are constituted as criminal, immoral, diseased, and/or expendable because of their drug use. As these points suggest, Fitzgerald's frame is primarily Deleuzian, although this is applied with variable intensity in different chapters. …
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Jul 1, 2024
Les Back + 1
Open Access