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

    Young brains at risk: Co-constituting youth and addiction in neuroscience-informed Australian drug education

    Access Status
    Fulltext not available
    Authors
    Farrugia, A.
    Fraser, Suzanne
    Date
    2017
    Type
    Journal Article
    
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Citation
    Farrugia, A. and Fraser, S. 2017. Young brains at risk: Co-constituting youth and addiction in neuroscience-informed Australian drug education. BioSocieties. 12 (4): pp. 588–610.
    Source Title
    BioSocieties
    DOI
    10.1057/s41292-017-0047-2
    ISSN
    1745-8552
    School
    National Drug Research Institute (NDRI)
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/55022
    Collection
    • Curtin Research Publications
    Abstract

    This article explores the developing relationship between neuroscientific understandings of ‘addiction’ and ‘youth’. Drawing on science and technology studies theory and social scientific analyses of both these concepts, it identifies a co-constitutive relationship between notions of addiction as a brain disease and of youth as a stage of brain development. These two concepts are then tracked in a series of drug education documents concerned with alcohol and other drug (AOD) use and addiction among young people, and their implications and effects and analysed together. The aim is to investigate the impact on drug education of neuroscientific approaches to youth and addiction. Are new concepts and directions for harm reduction created in the encounters between neuroscience, youth and addiction, or do they simply reinstate and reinforce existing assumptions and judgments? Is drug education shaped by these concepts likely to achieve its aim, that is, to increase young people’s sensitivity to harm and safety? The article begins by introducing neuroscientific accounts of youth and addiction, arguing that the two concepts share three key assumptions. First, both emphasise biology and sideline social context in the making of drug use practices and outcomes. Second, both reproduce uncritical treatments of brain scans (PET and fMRI images) as windows into minds and subjects. Third, both understand the brain as ontologically separate from its environment. These assumptions and their implications are then tracked through an analysis of Australian drug education resources, focusing on how drug education constitutes youthfulness and addiction as pathological disorders. In its reliance on neuroscientific understandings of youth and addiction, we conclude, drug education is unlikely to achieve its goal of reducing drug-related harm.

    Related items

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

    • A Thousand Contradictory Ways: Addiction, Neuroscience, and Expert Autobiography
      Fraser, Suzanne (2015)
      Neuroscientific accounts of addiction are increasingly influential in health and medical circles. At the same time a diverse, if equally scientifically focused, opposition to addiction neuroscience is emerging. In this ...
    • Addiction stigma and the biopolitics of liberal modernity: A qualitative analysis
      Fraser, Suzanne; Pienaar, Kiran; Dilkes-Frayne, E.; Moore, David; Kokanovic, R.; Treloar, C.; Dunlop, A. (2017)
      Definitions of addiction have never been more hotly contested. The advance of neuroscientific accounts has not only placed into public awareness a highly controversial explanatory approach, it has also shed new light on ...
    • Junk: Overeating and obesity and the neuroscience of addiction
      Fraser, Suzanne (2013)
      Over the past decade intense concern has developed in the West about what has been characterised as an obesity epidemic. This concern is producing a range of effects, including changing attitudes towards food. Some foods ...
    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.