Curtin University Homepage
  • Library
  • Help
    • Admin

    espace - Curtin’s institutional repository

    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.
    View Item 
    • espace Home
    • espace
    • Curtin Research Publications
    • View Item
    • espace Home
    • espace
    • Curtin Research Publications
    • View Item

    Enacting multiple methamphetamines: The ontological politics of public discourse and consumer accounts of a drug and its effects

    Access Status
    Fulltext not available
    Authors
    Dwyer, Robyn
    Moore, David
    Date
    2013
    Type
    Journal Article
    
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Citation
    Dwyer, Robyn and Moore, David. 2013. Enacting multiple methamphetamines: The ontological politics of public discourse and consumer accounts of a drug and its effects. International Journal of Drug Policy. 24 (3): pp. 203-211.
    Source Title
    International Journal of Drug Policy
    DOI
    10.1016/j.drugpo.2013.03.003
    ISSN
    0955-3959
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/46173
    Collection
    • Curtin Research Publications
    Abstract

    Over the last decade in Australia, methamphetamine has come to be seen as a significant issue for drug research, policy and practice. Concerns have been expressed over its potency, the increasing prevalence of its use and its potential for producing greater levels, and more severe forms, of harm compared to amphetamine or other drugs. In this article, we critically examine some of the ways in which methamphetamine and its effects are produced and reproduced within and through Australian public discourse, focusing in particular on the associations made between methamphetamine and psychosis. We show how public discourse enacts methamphetamine as an anterior, stable, singular and definite object routinely linked to the severe psychological ‘harm’ of psychosis. We contrast the enactment of methamphetamine within public discourse with how methamphetamine is enacted by consumers of the drug.In their accounts, consumers perform different methamphetamine objects and offer different interpretations of the relationships of these objects to psychological problems and of the ontological nature (i.e. relating to what is real, what is, what exists) of these problems. In examining public discourse and consumer accounts, we challenge conventional ontological understandings of methamphetamine as anterior, singular, stable and definite, and of its psychological effects as indicative of pathology. In line with recent critical social research on drugs, we draw on social studies of science and technology that focus on the performativity of scientific knowledge and material practices. We suggest that recognising the ontological contingency, and therefore the multiplicity, of methamphetamine offers a critical counterpoint to conventional research, policy and practice accounts of methamphetamine and its psychological effects.

    Related items

    Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.

    • Methamphetamine ‘facts’: The production of a ‘destructive’ drug in Australian scientific texts
      Thomson, N.; Moore, David (2014)
      In this article, we analyse the ways in which methamphetamine, its use, and those who consume it are discursively produced in Australian scientific research, drawing on theoretical concepts from the field of science and ...
    • An ethnographic study of recreational drug use and identity management among a network of electronic dance music enthusiasts in Perth, Western Australia
      Green, Rachael Renee (2012)
      This thesis explores the social contexts and cultural significance of amphetamine-type stimulant (ATS) and alcohol use among a social network of young adults in Perth, Western Australia. The study is positioned by the ...
    • Exploring the micro-politics of normalised drug use in the social lives of a group of young 'party drug' users in Melbourne, Australia
      Pennay, Amy (2012)
      Young people today live in what some scholars and commentators have defined as a 'post-modern' era, characterised by globalisation, the internet, mass media, production and consumption. Post-modernity has seen a change ...
    Advanced search

    Browse

    Communities & CollectionsIssue DateAuthorTitleSubjectDocument TypeThis CollectionIssue DateAuthorTitleSubjectDocument Type

    My Account

    Admin

    Statistics

    Most Popular ItemsStatistics by CountryMost Popular Authors

    Follow Curtin

    • 
    • 
    • 
    • 
    • 

    CRICOS Provider Code: 00301JABN: 99 143 842 569TEQSA: PRV12158

    Copyright | Disclaimer | Privacy statement | Accessibility

    Curtin would like to pay respect to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members of our community by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which the Perth campus is located, the Whadjuk people of the Nyungar Nation; and on our Kalgoorlie campus, the Wongutha people of the North-Eastern Goldfields.