Challenging the addiction/health binary with assemblage thinking: An analysis of consumer accounts

Critical analyses of drug use and 'addiction' have identified a series of binary oppositions between addiction and free will, independence, self-control, responsibility, productivity and autonomy. This critical work has also examined how science, policy and popular discourses frequently characterise addiction as antithetical to health and well-being. Furthermore, those diagnosed with addiction are often understood as indifferent to health and well-being, or as lacking the knowledge or desire required to maintain them. In this article, we draw on data from 60 qualitative interviews with people who self-identify as living with an 'addiction', 'dependence' or 'habit', to argue that the binary opposition between addiction and health struggles to attend to their rich and varied health perspectives and experiences. We explore three themes in the interview data: reinscribing the binary opposition between addiction and health/well-being; strategies for maintaining health and well-being alongside addiction; and alcohol and other drug consumption as aiding health and well-being. Perhaps because addiction and health have been so thoroughly understood as antithetical, such perspectives and experiences have received surprisingly little research and policy attention. Yet they offer fertile ground for rethinking the strengths and capacities of those who self-identity as living with an addiction, dependence or habit, as well as untapped resources for responding to the harm sometimes associated with alcohol and other drug use

Iterating ‘addiction’: Residential relocation and the spatio-temporal production of alcohol and other drug consumption patterns

Addiction is generally understood to be characterised by a persistent pattern of regular, heavy alcohol and other drug consumption. Current models of addiction tend to locate the causes of these patterns within the body or brain of the individual, sidelining relational and contextual factors. Where space and place are acknowledged as key factors contributing to consumption, they tend to be conceived of as static or fixed, which limits their ability to account for the fluid production and modulation of consumption patterns over time. In this article we query individualised and decontextualised understandings of the causes of consumption patterns through an analysis of accounts of residential relocation from interviews undertaken for a large research project on experiences of addiction in Australia. In conducting our analysis we conceptualise alcohol and other drug consumption patterns using Karen Barad's notions of intra-action and spatio-temporality, which allow for greater attention to be paid to the spatial and temporal dimensions of the material and social processes involved in generating consumption patterns. Drawing on 60 in-depth interviews conducted with people who self-identified as experiencing an alcohol and other drug addiction, dependence or habit, our analysis focuses on the ways in which participant accounts of moving enacted space and time as significant factors in how patterns of consumption were generated, disrupted and maintained. Our analysis explores how consumption patterns arose within highly localised relations, demonstrating the need for understandings of consumption patterns that acknowledge the indivisibility of space and time in their production. In concluding, we argue for a move away from static conceptions of place towards a more dynamic conception of spatio-temporality, and suggest the need to consider avenues for more effectively integrating place and time into strategies for generating preferred consumption patterns and initiating and sustaining change where desired

Safety in the silence: Hepatitis C risk and prevention in three networks of Australians who inject drugs

Hepatitis C is a significant public health issue in Australia, as it is in many countries around the world. In the last few years, the field of social research on hepatitis C has expanded to more explicitly acknowledge and address the broad range of factors that influence health and risk in the context of hepatitis C transmission. Rhodes (2002, 2009) risk environment framework has been particularly influential in this regard, identifying policy, economic, physical and social environments that operate at micro- and macro-levels of influence. However, little research has explored in detail the micro-social dimensions of hepatitis C risk and prevention. Employing a social network analysis design, combining qualitative interviews and participatory social network mapping, this study generated new insights into how social network factors influenced the sharing and reuse of injecting equipment within particular networks of people who inject drugs. The networks were recruited from three geographically and socially diverse settings in Australia. The first network was located in inner city Sydney, an area with a demographically diverse population; the second in outer suburban Sydney, in an area with high numbers of Vietnamese migrant Australians; and the third in a regional city in New South Wales, in an area with high numbers of economically marginalised young people. The analysis focused on exploring the different perspectives shared by network members regarding hepatitis C-related knowledge, communication and network dynamics. A pervasive silence was observed in all networks regarding hepatitis C, accompanied by remarkable variation in knowledge of hepatitis C between network members. However, despite this range in knowledge and restriction in communication, evidence was also found of network members actively working to prevent hepatitis C transmission in their networks, particularly through peer distribution of sterile injecting equipment. Nonetheless, the normalisation of hepatitis C within these networks of people who inject drugs did not necessarily result in a reduction in hepatitis C-related stigma. Further research is needed to consider how these related social network-level factors influence hepatitis C transmission in a diverse range of other networks of people who inject drugs, to strengthen the potential for harm reduction approaches to acknowledge and learn from these informal responses to hepatitis C risk

The Quad

Yearbook of the Class of 1967

1911 Calendar of the University of Adelaide

449 pp.This edition contains Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Part 1 includes Officers and Members of the University; Committees, Boards, and Faculties; List of Students, 1910; Statutes of the University; and Regulations, Schedules, and Rules. Part 2 details The Elder Conservatorium staff, students, awards, scholarships, rules and fees. Part 3 includes Public Examinations and Part 4 lists Public Examinations in Music. Part 5 includes the Annual Report for 1910 and various Acts and Standing Orders

Indonesian cultural policy, 1950-2003: culture, institutions, government

This thesis examines official cultural policy in Indonesia, focussing on the cultural policy of the national governments from 1950 until 2003. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s writings about government and debates about cultural policy in Cultural Studies, the study proposes that the features of cultural policy in Indonesia are primarily determined by the changing ways that the state has put culture to work in its versions of modern governance. Part I of the thesis provides a history of official cultural policy, including a background chapter on the late colonial era and the Japanese occupation. Although contemporary cultural policy was first articulated within Western liberal democracies to shape self-governing national citizens, the Dutch colonial cultural policy differed in that it assumed indigenous subjects had reduced capacities and focussed on managing ethnic populations. The cultural policies of subsequent governments maintained the twin imperatives of ‘improving’ individuals and managing populations, but with different understandings of both imperatives. While a more autonomous subject was assumed during Constitutional Democracy, Guided Democracy exercised greater state guidance as part of Sukarno’s mobilisation of the population behind his political program. Cultural policy during the New Order era rejected Sukarno’s ‘politicisation’ of culture, replaced ‘improvement’ with ‘development’ and further strengthened the role of the state in providing cultural guidance, a move justified by designating Indonesians backward by modern standards.The Japanese administration was the first government to address a national population. Relations among indigenous ethnic populations and between ethnicity and the nation were addressed in cultural policy from 1956 and were central to cultural policy throughout the New Order era. Part II of the thesis consists of two case studies of cultural programs in the New Order and Reform eras: (1) the arts councils and cultural parks and (2) a cultural research project. It explores New Order centralism, demonstrating the heterogeneity between different levels of the state and how governmental goals imbued particular practices and objects with special significance and meaning by constructing them as culture. Cultural policy in the post-Suharto period is addressed in both Parts I and II. While the practices of the New Order era are generally continuing, decentralisation created the possibility of a plurality of cultural policies across Indonesia, as lower levels of government are responsible for administering cultural policy. Decentralisation could result in a more participatory cultural policy as more cultural practices are addressed or a narrowing of cultural policy if conservative ethnic identity politics drives changes

1940 Calendar of the University of Adelaide

586ppThis edition includes Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and Appendix. Part 1 includes detailed information on Council, Committees, Faculties and Boards, officers of the University, endowments and gifts, list of graduates, statutes and standing orders, scholarships and prizes, and societies associatd with the University. Part 2 includes regulations and other information relating to the Elder Conservatorium. Part 3 includes details relating to Public Examinations in Music. Part 4 includes the 1939 Annual Report, Commemoration Addresses, Bibliography and Financial Statements and details of University Acts. The Appendix includes syllabus of subjects for 1940 degree and diploma courses and timetables

GVSU Press Releases, 1974

A compilation of press releases for the year 1974 submitted by University Communications (formerly News & Information Services) to news agencies concerning the people, places, and events related to Grand Valley State University