Main description:

Drug use is widely understood in terms of its subjects, substances and settings. But what happens when these distinctions start to blur?

Injecting Bodies in More-than-Human Worlds moves away from a hierarchical conceptualisation of drug use based on its subjects and their objects, offering unique and fresh insights into the complex world of injecting drugs. Focussing on the Deleuzian notion of bodies-in-process, Dennis proposes a new and timely approach to drugs where agency materialises in relation to others - human and not. Using rich, ethnographic data to demonstrate bodies' in/capacities to act through their relationality, Dennis carefully maps out where bodies are thought, practised, lived and intervened-with: caught in tension between pleasure and addiction, activity and passivity, 'becoming-other' and 'becoming-blocked', and making and breaking habits.

Arguing for a deeper engagement both with how bodies are enacted and with our collective responsibility to bring them together in healthier ways, this volume offers a unique intervention into the sociology of drugs and, more widely, health and illness. It will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as Science and Technology Studies, Sociology and Social Policy, Drugs and Addiction, and Health and Medical Anthropology.

Contents:

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Doing drug research in more-than-human worlds

Chapter 1: Approaching bodies: 'Becoming-with'

Affect, matter, practice

Becoming-with as method

Rhizomatic analysis or becoming moved

Ethicopolitics or doing research with care

Chapter 2: Thinking bodies: Conceptualising pleasure and not-so-pleasurable concepts

Conceptualising addicted pleasure: A modern paradox

Making concepts: Keeping pleasure and addiction apart

Pleasure has never been free: 'As soon as I start to think about it...'

Pleasure-in-tension: '...It's a really lovely feeling but my god the crap that comes with it'

Chapter 3: Practicing bodies: 'On the tilt': The injecting event and the fragility of pleasure among other affects

'Keeping the glass upright': A relational achievement

Fragile connections: Directing bodies towards pleasure

'The glass drops': Slipping assemblages

Balancing 'the speedball': 'A different drug altogether'

Chapter 4: Living bodies: Vital becomings: Becoming-normal, -other and -blocked with drugs

Becoming 'normal'

Becoming-other

Becoming-blocked: 'You don't grow'

Chapter 5: Intervening-with bodies: Troubling recovery: Mediating habits and doing more than harm reduction

Becoming-with drugs as habit

'The recovery agenda'

More-than-harm-reduction: Working with habits

Conclusion: Empowering bodies: Making bodies better?

Appendix

Bibliography