Paper short abstract:

This paper is concerned with research methods and their descriptive effects. Focusing on Howard Becker's sociology of drug use it addresses the politics of descriptive methods as relational practices that produce meetings between objects, people, publics and policy.

Paper long abstract:

Howard Becker's methodological practice of description has been debated, critiqued and renewed in a range of fields including drugs research, sociology, STS and more recently Heather Love's (2015) re-appraisal of the social science of deviance for the humanities. Much of this debate concerns the politics of social research methods and their descriptive effects. Taking up these empirical concerns with the construction of social scientific knowledge this paper returns to the problem of description in Becker's work. Focusing on his sociology of drug use it addresses the politics of descriptive methods as relational practices that produce meetings between objects, people, publics and policy. In so doing it explores how description is contested, problematised and transformative. Reviewing the methodological significance of the syringe as a visual object in Harm Reduction research and the public education campaign 'Rachel's Story' the paper situates the problem of description as a site for political intervention, empirical engagement and thinking with objects.