Habitus and Drug Using Environments

Informed by the thought of Pierre Bourdieu and framed by the philosophy of harm reduction, Habitus and Drug Using Environments provides a sociological analysis of public environments affected by injecting drug use. Drawing on ethnographic research across several locations, this book offers a qualitative and phenomenological account of the social organisation of public settings used for the preparation and administration of illicit drugs, informed by interviews with both injecting drug users and those whose employment is directly affected by public injecting drug use. With attention to current policy-related questions concerning the lived experience of 'place' upon the health of injecting drug users, how wider social structures contribute to participation in public injecting and the manner in which participation in public injecting amplifies drug-related harm, Habitus and Drug Using Environments sheds light on the ways in which health and place interact to produce and reproduce already established hazards associated with injecting drug use. As such, it will be of interest to sociologists, geographers, criminologists and policy makers working in fields such as drug use, risk behaviours and their relation to place, and health studies.

Stephen Parkin is a qualitative researcher at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Services, University of Oxford, UK and author of An Applied Visual Sociology: Picturing Harm Reduction.

1: Drug Using Environments; 2: Structure and Agency; 3: Considering Bourdieu; 4: Methodology and Method; 5: Field; 6: The Doxic Attitude of Public Injecting: Habitus and Capital; 7: Struggle: Control and Resistance; 8: Harm and Hazard: The Illusio of the Public Injecting Habitus; 9: Producing Habitus: The Embodiment of Public Injecting Observed; 10: Habitus and Drug Using Environments: Health, Place and Lived-Experience