Anthropological reflections on youth drug use research in Australia: what we don't know and how we should find out

Opening up the Cul-de-Sac of Youth Drug Studies: A Contribution to the Construction of Some Alternative Truths

In this article I attempt to set down some starting points for the construction of ways of understanding alcohol and other drug use among young people that differ from those already established in the drug research field. I open with a discussion of the developmental model of “adolescence” and “youth,” arguably the dominant discourse in youth drug research; in particular, its focus on biology, the environment, and the acquisition of personal identity. I then focus on selected elements of the sociological, anthropological and historical literatures on young people that chart a very different set of empirical, analytical and theoretical concerns from those established by the “science” of development; namely, culture, social class, generational conflict, social organization, gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, spatiality, subjectivity and Eurocentrism. I conclude by arguing that those from outside the dominant drug-research disciplines of epidemiology, medicine and psychology must continually press their case for the relevance of new ideas in order to contribute to a more open and theoretically dynamic field.

“It Might Be a Scummy-Arsed Drug but it's a Sick Buzz”: Chroming and Pleasure

Arguing that the role of pleasure in young people's decisions to use inhalants has been underexplored, this paper provides a typology for the kinds of pleasurable experience young people report from chroming (an Australian term for inhalant use involving aerosol paints). The paper draws on in-depth interviews with young people with experience of chroming and with expert workers in Melbourne, Australia. Seven categories of pleasurable experience related to chroming are identified through thematic analysis of these interviews: feeling, escaping and relocating, imagining, doing, socializing, communicating, and consuming. In the context of use by marginalized young people, chroming has powerful and often deeply pleasurable effects. Understanding more about the kinds of enjoyment that young people seek and experience through chroming—and by implication what workers are asking them to give up when they try to make them stop using these drugs—is important in designing policy interventions.

The Risk Environment of Heroin Use Initiation: Young Women, Intimate Partners, and "Drug Relationships"

This paper examines young women's initiation to heroin use in the context of an intimate relationship based on data from a small-scale ethno-epidemiology of heroin use in Ireland, 2007-2009. The epidemiological sample included 120 young people, and life history interviews were conducted with a sub-sample of 40 youth aged 16-25 years. A detailed analysis of the "risk environment" of young women's heroin initiation highlights a complex interplay between women's agency and intimate partner influence. It is argued that dichotomous representations of women as victims or emancipated consumers do not adequately capture the complexity of women's initiation journeys. The study's limitations are noted and implications for drug use prevention and harm reduction strategies are discussed.

'It's just a social thing': drug use, friendship and borderwork among marginalized young people

This article joins a growing chorus of researchers who doubt the utility of the concept of peer pressure for explaining young people's initiation to and use of drugs. Drawing on interview data with 45 patrons of a youth drop-in centre in Ottawa, Canada, we argue that drug use is more intricately woven into friendship - affective relationships of trust and intimacy, belonging and sharing - rather than simply part of the unidirectional pressures some young people put on others to fit in to a subculture. Marginalized young people's narratives show that drugs and alcohol furnish them with a relatively inexpensive pastime to share with friends, introducing opportunities for intimacy that are otherwise difficult to attain at the individualistic and isolating margins of neoliberal cities. We demonstrate how young drug users draw boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable relationships to drugs and alcohol, articulating an important sense of belonging to a superior group of drug users. Through this 'borderwork', they solidify the bonds they share with the people with whom they smoke cannabis and drink alcohol.

Penetrating social worlds: conducting ethnographic research into alcohol and other drug use within Australia

Despite growing interest in the potential usefulness of ethnography with respect to alcohol and other drug studies, the literature on such a method in the Australian context is sparse. This paper focuses on the practical conduct of ethnographic research into alcohol and other drug use in Australia, using two research experiences as illustrations. It covers the establishment and maintenance of access to the 'field', methods of data collection, the process of analysis (which is intertwined with data collection), and the production of written texts. The paper's purpose is to provide prospective ethnographers in the alcohol and other drug field with some sense of the nature and texture of ethnographic fieldwork and analysis.