Protecting Stories: How Symbolic Boundaries Reduce Victimization and Harmful Drug Use

Abstract

Symbolic boundaries are used for establishing narrative identities and have critical impact on behavior and interpersonal interactions. Using data from a photo-ethnography of people who use methamphetamine in Alabama we show how women use stories and images to draw symbolic boundaries between themselves and others. These boundaries made sense of their meth use, but also guided behavior, controlled drug use, and aided in negotiating personal relationships. Maintaining boundaries through stories and images is important for people with drug problems, as such boundaries provide self-worth and serve as ideals to be lived up to. Symbolic boundaries can thus reduce harmful drug use and be an important means for exercising control and agency at the margins of society.

Death Holds No Fear: Overdose Risk Perceptions Among People Who Inject Drugs

“…Although all people engage in boundary work, it is especially important for members of stigmatized groups, such as PWID (Lloyd, 2013; Luoma et al, 2007; Simmonds & Coomber, 2009). Similar to neutralization, symbolic boundaries may also be key for feelings of self-worth and to reduce stigma (Copes et al, 2022). In order to prevent overdoses, this also illustrates the importance emphasizing that all PWID may be at risk of overdose, despite perceptions of control, tolerance and drug-specific competence.…”

“…Although all people engage in boundary work, it is especially important for members of stigmatized groups, such as PWID (Lloyd, 2013; Luoma et al, 2007; Simmonds & Coomber, 2009). Consequently, studies show that PWID create symbolic boundaries in order to actively resist this stigma by distancing themselves from stereotypical people who use drugs (Copes, 2016; Copes et al, 2022; Sandberg, 2012).…”

The Glasgow miracle? Storytelling, violence reduction and public policy

“…Finally, performance matters. In the field of narrative criminology, a number of important recent contributions have demonstrated the role that stories can play in resisting forms of violence (Copes et al, 2023;Fleetwood, 2019;Sandberg and Colvin, 2020). As Sandberg andColvin (2020: 1588) summarize, such counter-narratives are 'stories that challenge or oppose dominant stories either in mainstream social or in subcultural contexts'.…”

“…In the process, the analytic gaze has broadened to include not only those in conflict with the law but also those who create, impose, and police it, as well as the wider significance of stories of crime in the justice system and beyond (Annison, 2021). Recently, narrative scholars have also sought to interrogate the role that stories can play in challenging both systemic and street-based forms of violence (Copes et al, 2023; Fleetwood, 2019; Sandberg and Colvin, 2020), in short not ‘just to analyse narratives, but to try and change them’ (Fleetwood et al, 2019: 16).…”