Affected in the nightclub. A case study of regular clubbers’ conflictual practices in nightclubs

The pleasures of drunken one-night stands: Assemblage theory and narrative environments

“…Alcohol was used to produce a specific mood, to loosen norms, and binge drinkers in this study had a sophisticated conceptualization of links to perceived effects resting in the constellation of the substance, emotions, time and space. A recent shift in social theory has broadened the investigational scope to include some of the non-human agents affecting the consumption of alcohol, drugs and sex in nightlife environments (Demant 2013, Dilkes-Frayne 2016, Duff 2016. Assemblage and affective theories (Jayne, Valentine et al 2010, Duff 2012, Duff 2014 are valuable to support arguments that objects, spaces and places are not "passive backdrops" to drunken one-night stands, rather socio-spatial settings that should be included in investigations of the experiences and practices of alcohol use and sex.…”

“What goes up must go down”: An exploration of the relationship between drug-related pleasure and harm experienced by a sample of regular “party drug” users

“…As aforementioned, previous research on party drug use has tended to focus on either the positive or negative effects of drug use, situating pleasure in opposition to risk or harm (Demant, 2013;Duff, 2008). This is an unhelpful dichotomy because as was the case with these young party drug users, experiences of negative consequences such as low mood or concentration could not have been achieved without firstly experiencing elevated mood and enhanced cognition.…”

“…While previous research has documented these benefits and harms, they have tended to be dealt with separately, rather than together, which is unhelpful given that the two concepts are not in opposition of one another (Demant, 2013;Duff, 2008), and much can be learned from understanding the complex and dynamic relationship between pleasure and harm. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork with a group of 25 young people from Melbourne, Australia, this paper explores the relationship between pleasure and harm as experienced both during and after extended sessions of party drug use.…”

NPS and the methadone queue: Spillages of space and time

“…Actor-network theory (ANT) (Latour, 2005;Law, 2009;Mol, 2010) rightly hints at the pleasures of substance use being located in acts of 'letting go' and 'coming back' that see the self surrendering to the sensuality of substances, spaces and objects that it shares agencies with (Duff, 2012). Such 'passings' from effects sought by the human to effects done to the human (Gomart & Hennion, 1999) open up multiplicities of being that lead to reconfigurations of bodies and substancesthe alcohol that causes violence in one context may not do or be the same in another (Demant, 2013), the methamphetamine which leads users into psychosis may encounter another context where it does not (Dwyer & Moore, 2013). As "fluid, shape-shifting and name-changing objects" (Law & Singleton, 2005, p.340), drugs afford the separation of the unified solid self from the linear flows of hard rationality.…”