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44 Contemp. Drug Probs. 3 (2017)

handle is hein.journals/condp44 and id is 1 raw text is: 





Review Essay
                                                                             Contemporary Drug Problems
                                                                                   2017, Vol. 44(l) 3-1I
                                                                                   © The Author(s) 2016
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Substances, Subjects,                                                      DOI: 10.1177/0091450916670268
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and the City                                                                             OSAGE




Helen Keane'


Fitzgerald, J. (201 5). Framing drug use: Bodies, space, economy and crime. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
US$162.62, 289 pages, ISBN 978-1-137-48223-5.
Smith, C. B. R. (201 6). Addiction, modernity, and the city: A users' guide to urban space. New York, NY: Routledge.
US$161.14, 233 pp, ISBN 978-1-138-79653-9.


These  books take the reader on a journey. This is a hackneyed  notion often invoked to describe a
process of inner growth or enlightenment, but in this case, the journey is closer to literal and definitely
embodied.  Spaces and  places are traversed and visited: in Fitzgerald's text, the streetscapes of Mel-
bourne  and domestic  interiors in a nearby regional town; in Smith's text, the intoxicating site of
consumption  and  dislocation he calls the addicted city. Les Back has suggested that one of the
challenges of 21st-century social research is how to account for the social world without assassinat-
ing the life contained within it (2012, p. 21). As an alcohol and other drug researcher, I cannot resist
some  collegial pride at the liveliness of these two texts. Although full of information, they do not trade
in fossil facts nor lifeless conceptions (p. 21). Before going any further, I should add that I know
both authors and am  mentioned  in Smith's acknowledgments.
   Drugs and their use are central to the spaces encountered in these texts, which accounts for some of
their liveliness (although the proximity of death is not ignored). Both  authors are committed  to
producing  effects with their writing that go beyond the cognitive. Fitzgerald notes that when drugs
combine  with bodies, they change the parameters of the perceptible world (p. x), and in this sense,
both books act like the substances they describe and explore. Smith's text even includes discographies
and  filmographies to enhance the reader's trip. Conceptually, the parameters of what is habitually
referred to as alcohol and other drug use and the boundaries of the category of addiction are expanded
to incorporate global capitalism, the history of modernity, the pleasures of music, the experience of
falling in love, and the question of how we encounter the world. It's a lot to take in.
   Given the scope of the journey contained in these two books, I will begin with a simple overview.
This is followed by a more detailed account of content, focusing on the texts' engagement with two
central concepts in drug research: pathologization and the risk environment. In addition to the specific



School of Sociology, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Australia
Received July 31, 2016. Accepted for publication August 31, 2016.
Corresponding Author:
Helen Keane, School of Sociology, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra 2601, Australia.
Email: helen.keane@anu.edu.au

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