Identity and the Social Construction of Risk: Injecting Drug Use

Abstract

The links between risk-taking, identity and social context were examined in interviews with 20 young injecting drug users. Young men proclaimed accounts of identity either as 'recreational users' with the heroic personal characteristics to control their drug use, or as 'junkies' with traits of sensual hedonism leading inevitably to ever-increasing drug use. Young women's accounts were of themselves as 'junkies' driven to drug use by psychological pain and addictive personality. Drawing upon individualised explanations of behaviour, these discourses of self identity could nevertheless be seen to be linked to specific social practices: recreational users reported solidarities to maintain low drug use whereas the social scene of 'junkies' was not organised around such solidarities. Those who oscillated between recreational use and habitual use had moved across these different social contexts. Theories and practical strategies for harm minimisation, which recognise these relationships between selfidentity, social context and behaviour, are called for.

Needles in the Haystacks: The Social Context of Initiation to Heroin Injection in Rural Ohio

“…Qualitative researchers from Hughes (1977) to Agar and Schacht Reisinger (1999) and Rhodes (1997) have highlighted the social circumstances that predict and facilitate injection drug use, and the impact of social networks and contextual factors on patterns of heroin use has been well documented (Andrade et al, 1999;Crofts et al, 1996;Lalander, 2003;Latkin et al, 1999;Lovell, 2002;Plumridge and Chetwynd, 1999;Rhodes et al, 2003;Schroeder et al, 2001;Sherman et al, 2002). With very few exceptions, however (Furst et al, 2004;Trotter and Bowen, 1996), ethnographic studies of drug injectors have been based in urban or metropolitan areas, where heroin and cocaine are readily available and there are preexisting populations of IDUs.…”

Constructing risk across timescales and trajectories: Gay men's stories of sexual encounters

“…Others have focused on risk as a 'socially interactive enterprise' (Rhodes 1997: p. 211), examining how perceptions of risk are socially organized and how risk behaviour is negotiated and dependent on social relationships (particularly power relationships) (Douglas 1992;DiClemente 1991;Rhodes and Quirk 1997). Finally, still others have concentrated on the relationship between risk behaviour and social identity, noting how social practices take on important meanings within groups, granting to those who engage in them the rights to claim particular identities and to impute particular identities onto others (Plumridge and Chetwynd 1999).…”

“…These approaches yield much richer data, but sometimes the explanations put forward are incoherent or contradictory. The most significant problem with both of these extremes, however, is in understanding the relationship between what actually happened and the ways it is described and accounted for after the fact (Plumridge and Chetwynd 1999).…”

“…They are simultaneously 'replayings' of particular moments in time, and part of a larger 'reflexive organization of the self' (Giddens 1991). Such narratives should not then be expected to provide coherent accounts of transparent motivations; in fact, in some cases understanding contradiction might be much more important than uncovering coherence (Plumridge and Chetwynd 1999;Potter and Wetherell 1987).…”

Understanding drug misuse and changing identities: A life story approach

“…Much of this research is based on medical and scientific interests: less often do we find research that focuses on what people who misuse drugs have to tell us about their lives. A few recent notable exceptions can be found in Plumridge and Chetwynd (1999), McIntosh and McKegany (2001) and Masters (2005), a rich and informative biography of a man called Stuart.…”