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Accepted Paper:

'I can't say there's nothing good about it': calling for value pluralism in understandings of people who use drugs  
Samuel Brookfield (University of Queensland)

Paper short abstract:

An ethnographic study was conducted following twelve methamphetamine users trying to reduce or control their drug use. This paper identifies the participant's diverse conceptions of drug use, addiction, and recovery, and calls for the integration of 'counterpublic health' in drug use discourse.

Paper long abstract:

In Queensland over the last ten years harmful methamphetamine use has escalated dramatically, and long-term relapse rates for methamphetamine users entering treatment remain high. Methamphetamine use occurs in a complex social environment and is frequently demonised as antithetical to the values and norms of society. Drug users attempting to reduce or control their use must navigate a complex transition between the dynamic assemblages of 'addiction' and 'recovery.' An ethnographic approach is essential for providing detailed and accurate descriptions of these highly social processes. This paper presents the results of an eight-month ethnographic research project with methamphetamine users. Using a combination of in-depth qualitative interviews and ethnographic observation, the researcher has accompanied participants as they visit doctors, counsellors, friends and relatives, enter residential rehabilitation, undergo court proceedings, move house, become homeless, look after their children, argue with their partners, and experience relapse, withdrawals, and multiple recovery attempts. By attending to the narratives drug users use to order and interpret their experiences, in dialogue with relatives, clinicians, and representatives of the state, this paper will discuss the ways in which drug use is constructed as a deviant moral failing, a narrative that users then internalise and reproduce in their accounts. These findings will be placed within the theoretical perspective of 'counterpublic health', calling for a disruption of the hegemonic behavioural norms implicit in fields of mental health and public health, and for a more pluralistic vision of value when considering health and citizenship.

Panel P11
Drinking from the same well - the value of anthropology in the study of public health
  Session 1 Monday 2 December, 2019, -