ORCID Profile
0000-0002-9792-0385
Current Organisation
RMIT University
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In Research Link Australia (RLA), "Research Topics" refer to ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes. These topics are either sourced from ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes listed in researchers' related grants or generated by a large language model (LLM) based on their publications.
Studies of Asian Society | Sociological Methodology and Research Methods | Mental Health | Public Health and Health Services not elsewhere classified | Social and Cultural Anthropology | Anthropology | Public Health and Health Services | Sociology and Social Studies of Science and Technology
Social Structure and Health | Disability and Functional Capacity | Health Related to Ageing | Mental Health |
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 14-10-2023
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 28-10-2020
Abstract: Healing architecture is a defining feature of contemporary hospital design in many parts of the world, with psychiatric in-patient facilities in Denmark at the forefront of this innovation. The approach rests on the contention that designed clinical spaces and the particular dispositions they express may promote patient recovery. Although the idea that health may be spatially mediated is well-established, the means of this mediation are far from settled. This article contributes to this debate by analysing medical encounters in the context of a new purpose-built psychiatric hospital opened in Slagelse, Denmark in late 2015 as an ex le of healing architecture for the region. Grounded in qualitative research conducted in two wards between 2016 and 2017, we explore the key material and social effects of the hospital's healing architecture, and the spaces and practices it enacts. Following the work of Michael Lynch, we consider both the designed 'spatial order' of the in-patient wards and the 'spatial orderings' unfolding therein with a particular interest in how order is accomplished in psychiatric work. With much of the existing discussion of healing architectures focusing on their impacts on patient wellbeing, we consider how healing architectures may also be transforming psychiatric work.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2007
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 20-06-2017
DOI: 10.1111/TRAN.12190
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2015
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 29-04-2019
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2011
DOI: 10.1080/15332640.2011.547791
Abstract: This article reports on ethno-cultural differences in the use of alcohol and other drugs by using data derived from the Vancouver Youth Drug Reporting System. Data were collected between May and August 2006 among a s le of 514 youth aged 16 to 25. Statistically significant ethno-cultural differences were reported for "lifetime" alcohol and other drugs prevalence alcohol and other drugs experience in the peer group parental attitudes and in the assessment of alcohol and other drugs prevention strategies. White and Aboriginal youth reported significantly higher rates of personal and peer group alcohol and other drugs use than other groups, whereas Chinese youth reported the lowest rates.The implications of these findings for alcohol and other drug prevention efforts are briefly discussed.
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 14-11-2016
Abstract: Sophisticated understandings of organizational dynamics and processes of organizational change are crucial for the development and success of health promotion initiatives. Theory has a valuable contribution to make in understanding organizational change, for identifying influential factors that should be the focus of change efforts and for selecting the strategies that can be applied to promote change. This article reviews select organizational change models to identify the most pertinent insights for health promotion practitioners. Theoretically derived considerations for practitioners who seek to foster organizational change include the extent to which the initiative is modifiable to fit with the internal context the amount of time that is allocated to truly institutionalize change the ability of the agents of change to build short-term success deliberately into their implementation plan whether or not the shared group experience of action for change is positive or negative and the degree to which agencies that are the intended recipients of change are resourced to focus on internal factors. In reviewing theories of organizational change, the article also addresses strategies for facilitating the adoption of key theoretical insights into the design and implementation of health promotion initiatives in erse organizational settings. If nothing else, aligning health promotion with organizational change theory promises insights into what it is that health promoters do and the time that it can take to do it effectively.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-01-2020
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 17-11-2020
Abstract: This article explores the links between habit, fashion and subjectification to extend analysis of the clothed body beyond the semiotic frames that have tended to dominate discussions of fashion across the social sciences and humanities. Our goal is to explain how fashion’s erse materialities participate in the modulations of subjectivity, affecting bodies in erse encounters between matter, signs and practices. We develop our analysis by way of Gilles Deleuze’s discussion of encounters, habit and memory. Our principal contention is that fashion may usefully be theorised in terms of specific habits of coordination by which affects, memories, sensations and desires are transmitted between bodies in varied spatial, temporal, material and affective encounters. Following the work of John Protevi, we argue that such coordination expresses a distinctive mode of subjectification according to the specific encounters immanent to it. We ground this discussion in detailed analysis of the work of Melbourne artist Fiona Abicare. Abicare’s installation and performance-based practice invokes the affective and habitual aspects of fashion as each is instantiated in encounters between bodies. Abicare’s attention to the habits and memories of the clothed body alludes to the varied practices of subjectification by which erse subjects of fashion emerge.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2020
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2019
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 12-2003
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2012
DOI: 10.1016/J.HEALTHPLACE.2012.07.003
Abstract: This paper presents findings drawn from a study of the role of "enabling places" in promoting recovery among a s le of 24 adults living with a mental illness in Melbourne, Australia. Featuring a mix of visual and qualitative methods, the study invited participants to identify local places and place-related activities, which they regarded as supportive of their own health and recovery. The aim was to determine how and under what circumstances local places support recovery, and the ways these places are identified and maintained. Consistent with the logic of "enabling places", the study yielded evidence indicating that the various places identified by participants promoted recovery by facilitating access to an array of social, material and/or affective resources. Participants indicated that they draw on these resources in support of activities and relationships vital to the everyday 'work' of recovery. The paper closes with a discussion of the ways such "enabling" resources may be mobilised in the delivery of novel 'place-based' mental health initiatives.
Publisher: S. Karger AG
Date: 2014
DOI: 10.1159/000360697
Abstract: Considerable recent attention has focused on how harmful or problematic cannabis use is defined and understood in the literature and put to use in clinical practice. The aim of the current study is to review conceptual and measurement shortcomings in the identification of problematic cannabis use, drawing on the WHO ASSIST instrument for specific ex les. Three issues with the current approach are debated and discussed: (1) the identification of problematic cannabis use disproportionately relies on measures of the frequency of cannabis consumption rather than the harms experienced (2) the quantity consumed on a typical day is not considered when assessing problematic use, and (3) screening tools for problematic use employ a ‘one-size-fits-all approach' and fail to reflect on the drug use context (networks and environment). Our commentary tackles each issue, with a review of relevant literature coupled with analyses of two Canadian data sources - a representative s le of the Canadian adult population and a smaller s le of adult, regular, long-term cannabis users from four Canadian cities - to further articulate each point. This article concludes with a discussion of appropriate treatment interventions and approaches to reduce cannabis-related harms, and offers suggested changes to improve the measurement of problematic cannabis use.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2016
DOI: 10.1016/J.DRUGPO.2015.10.003
Abstract: Human geographers have been at the forefront of efforts across the social sciences to develop "assemblage thinking", applying and extending this model in a series of highly original empirical studies. This commentary assesses some of the conceptual, methodological and procedural implications of this research for contemporary drug studies. I will argue that the most useful way of approaching assemblage thinking in the analysis of drug problems is to focus on the ways assemblages draw together social, affective and material forces and entities. I will briefly review these three nodes before indicating how their analysis may inspire novel empirical assessments of drug assemblages. I will conclude by exploring how the assemblage may replace the 'subject' and 'social context' as a discrete unit of analysis in drug studies.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2008
DOI: 10.1016/J.DRUGPO.2007.07.003
Abstract: The pleasures associated with the use of illicit drugs are rarely acknowledged in contemporary drug policy debates. Where they are, these pleasures are almost always attributed to the specific physiological and/or sensory effects of in idual substances. Drawing on qualitative research recently completed in Melbourne, Australia, this paper argues that the pleasures associated with illicit drug use extend well beyond the purely physiological to include a host of properly contextual elements as well. These "contextual" pleasures include the corporeal experience of space, such as the "feeling" of electronic music in a large night-club space, or the engagement with natural and wilderness environments. Also important are a range of corporeal and performative practices, such as dancing and interacting with strangers, which were reportedly facilitated with the use of different drugs. This emphasis on the dynamics of space, embodiment and practice as they impact the contextual experience of pleasure, has the potential to open up new ways of thinking about pleasure and its place in the mediation of all drug related behaviours. Greater understanding of these relationships should also facilitate the emergence of new, context specific, drug prevention and harm reduction initiatives.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 06-01-2022
DOI: 10.1111/TRAN.12519
Abstract: Across the social sciences the predominant engagement with ageing is through the study of human ageing, this also the exclusive concern of the “geography of ageing”. With the aim of advancing scholarship substantially, in this paper we (re)turn to science and consider how a broader, more fundamental understanding of ageing is found in the process of increasing entropy that all entities/systems are eventually subject to and contributors towards. Based on this theoretical foundation – but cognisant of the need for a contemporary posthumanist sensibility – we challenge geographers and others to extend the study of ageing to encompass all entities/systems at all possible levels of scale and complexity, highlighting pockets of partial precedent for this extension in different literatures. We argue that, through accepting this “all‐world ageing” challenge, a more fulsome appreciation of the ageing macrocosm might be arrived at.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2023
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2012
DOI: 10.1016/J.DRUGPO.2011.11.004
Abstract: Needle and syringe programmes (NSPs) have been established as effective harm reduction initiatives to reduce injection drug use (IDU)-related risk behaviours, including sharing needles. On May 31, 2008, Victoria, BC's only fixed site NSP was shut down due to community and political pressure. This study examines and compares IDU trends in Victoria with those in Vancouver, BC, a city which has not experienced any similar disruption of IDU-related public health measures. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected by interviewer-administered questionnaires conducted with injection drug users (n=579) in Victoria and Vancouver between late 2007 and late 2010. Needle sharing increased in Victoria from under 10% in early 2008 to 20% in late 2010, whilst rates remained relatively low in Vancouver. Participants in Victoria were significantly more likely to share needles than participants in Vancouver. Qualitative data collected in Victoria highlight the difficulty participants have experienced obtaining clean needles since the NSP closed. Recent injection of crack cocaine was independently associated with needle sharing. The closure of Victoria's fixed site NSP has likely resulted in increased engagement in high-risk behaviours, specifically needle sharing. Our findings highlight the contribution of NSPs as an essential public health measure.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2011
DOI: 10.1016/J.HEALTHPLACE.2010.09.012
Abstract: The study of therapeutic landscapes, restorative places and enabling environments - what might collectively be referred to as enabling places - has revealed much of the relationship between place and health promotion. However, it is arguable that this work has only partially accounted for the erse therapeutic features of enabling places and the various means of their production. Drawing on Bruno Latour, this paper introduces a conceptual logic of enabling places grounded in the analysis of enabling resources. Three categories of enabling resources will be considered: social, affective and material resources. It will be argued that enabling places are composed in erse actor-networks, facilitating access to enabling resources and supporting the development of novel agencies or capacities. This draws attention to the various networks and associations that promote health and wellbeing, as well as the resources and agencies necessary to maintain these states. The paper concludes that the analysis of enabling resources, and the networks and agencies that comprise them, provides a novel basis for describing the character and production of enabling places, as well as the erse benefits associated with them.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2013
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-04-2014
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Date: 2014
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2015
DOI: 10.1016/J.HEALTHPLACE.2014.11.010
Abstract: This article proposes a novel method for generating context-rich knowledge about 'hard-to-access' places. We ground our discussion in a recent qualitative study of social settings of youth drug use in Denmark. The study confirmed that private house parties are common sites of youth drug use, although these parties presented limited opportunities for fieldwork. In response, a 'map-task' was introduced to the study to complement fieldwork and interviews. We assess the most significant methodological and epistemological features of this map-task, and explore how it may to used to conduct observations 'from a distance' in hard-to-access places. Further, we argue that the map-task has a number of analytical and logistical advantages for scholars interested in the health and social aspects of 'hidden' phenomena, such as youth drug use.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 13-11-2014
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 27-03-2020
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2006
Publisher: SensePublishers
Date: 2013
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2006
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2021
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-2013
DOI: 10.1080/13691058.2012.754054
Abstract: Research shows that sexual minorities are at greater risk for illicit substance use and related harm than their heterosexual counterparts. This study examines a group of active drug users to assess whether sexual identity predicts increased risk of substance use and harm from ecstasy, ketamine, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and crack. Structured interviews were conducted with participants aged 15 years and older in Vancouver and Victoria, BC, Canada, during 2008-2012. Harm was measured with the World Health Organization's AUDIT and ASSIST tools. Regression analysis controlling for age, gender, education, housing and employment revealed lesbian, gay or bisexual in iduals were significantly more likely to have used ecstasy, ketamine and alcohol in the past 30 days compared to heterosexual participants. Inadequate housing increased the likelihood of crack use among both lesbian, gay and bisexuals and heterosexuals, but with considerably higher odds for the lesbian, gay and bisexual group. Lesbian, gay and bisexual participants reported less alcohol harm but greater ecstasy and ketamine harm, the latter two categorised by the ASSIST as hetamine and hallucinogen harms. Results suggest encouraging harm reduction among sexual minority, high-risk drug users, emphasising ecstasy and ketamine. The impact of stable housing on drug use should also be considered.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2020
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 11-2003
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 26-07-2019
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 30-11-2015
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 19-06-2014
Abstract: This article is interested in how notions of the ‘public’ are conceived, marshalled and enacted in drug-treatment responses to meth hetamine use in Melbourne, Australia. After reviewing qualitative data collected among health-care providers and meth hetamine consumers, we draw on the work of Michael Warner to argue that services for meth hetamine consumers in Melbourne betray ongoing tensions between ‘public’ and ‘counterpublic’ constituencies. Our analysis indicates that these tensions manifest in two ways: in the management of ‘street business’ in the delivery of services and in negotiating the meaning of health and the terms of its restoration or promotion. Reflecting these tensions, while the design of services for meth hetamine consumers is largely modelled on public health principles, the everyday experience of these services may be more accurately characterised in terms of what Kane Race has called ‘counterpublic health’. Extending Race’s analysis, we conclude that more explicit focus on the idea of counterpublic health may help local services engage with meth hetamine consumers in new ways, providing grounds for novel outreach, harm-reduction and treatment strategies.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 16-01-2017
Abstract: This article questions the anthropocentrism of existing treatments of creative work, creative industries and creative identities, and then considers various strategies for overcoming this bias in novel empirical analyses of creativity. Our aim is to begin to account for the nonhuman, ‘more-than-human’, bodies, actors and forces that participate in creative work. In pursuing this aim, we do not intend to eliminate the human subject from analysis of creative practice rather we will provide a more ‘symmetrical’ account of creativity, alert to both the human and nonhuman constituents of creative practice. We draw from Deleuze and Guattari’s discussion of the assemblage to develop this account. Based on this discussion, we will define the creative assemblage as a more or less temporary mixture of heterogeneous material, affective and semiotic forces, within which particular capacities for creativity emerge, alongside the creative practices these capacities express. Within this assemblage, creativity and creative practice are less the innate attributes of in idual bodies, and more a function of particular encounters and alliances between human and nonhuman bodies. We ground this discussion in qualitative research conducted in Melbourne, Australia, among creative professionals working in erse fields. Based on this research, we propose a ‘diagram’ of one local assemblage of creativity and the human and nonhuman alliances it relies on. We close by briefly reflecting on the implications of our analysis for debates regarding the ersity of creative work and the character of creative labour.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 26-04-2017
Abstract: Posthumanist ontologies have been employed in theoretical and empirical research in human geography to explore the production of subjectivity in processes, events and relations. Similar approaches have been adopted in critical drug research to emphasise the production of subjectivity in events of drug consumption. Within each body of work questions remain regarding the durations and becomings of subjectivity. Responding to these questions, we introduce the notions of tendencies and trajectories as a way of theorising the emergent and enduring aspects of subjectivity. We ground this discussion in a select review of posthumanist geographies, geographies of habit and post-phenomenological approaches, along with vignettes drawn from an ethnographic study of young people’s recreational drug use conducted in Melbourne, Australia. We use these sources to indicate how the notions of tendencies and trajectories may help to account for the emergent and enduring aspects of processes of subjectivation in events of drug consumption.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 27-02-2020
DOI: 10.1111/ADD.15000
Abstract: In 1998 Howard Parker, Judith Aldridge & Fiona Measham published Illegal Leisure, a ground‐breaking study of profound changes in British youth cultures in the 1990s, and the place of drugs and drug use in these upheavals. This work introduced the ‘normalization thesis’ to the social sciences, offering a novel vocabulary for re‐imagining the normative character of young people's attitudes towards and experiences of illicit drug use. Arriving at the dawn of the new century, the book offered a thoroughgoing re‐thinking of the character of youth cultures at a time of great social, cultural, economic and technological disruption. In so doing, the book deftly anticipated many of the most interesting currents of critical drug studies that followed.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2007
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2023
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2005
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 2010
DOI: 10.1068/D16209
Abstract: Michel de Certeau's account of the modern city emphasises the ‘doing’ and ‘making’ residents undertake in an attempt to render a city more amenable to an ‘art’ of resistance. Yet, in attending to this doing and making, de Certeau has largely ignored the felt and affective dimensions of city life. Edward Casey provides a compelling means of interrogating these affective dimensions, distinguishing ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ places in everyday life. Thick places are contrived in the imbrications of affect, habit, and practice, presenting opportunities for personal enrichment and a deepening of affective experience. Casey's work restores the affective fecundity of place, even if it fails to provide a clear sense of how thick places might be identified. This paper takes up this challenge in an attempt to clarify the role of affect and practice in the production of place. The paper first reviews the practical and affective dimensions of this place-making before turning to an ethnographic account of young people, place, and urban life recently completed in Vancouver, Canada. This study explored the ways young people negotiate and transform place and the impact these practices have on the characteristic orientations of self and belonging. The experience of place was found to involve a series of affective relays between the cultivation of private places and the negotiation of designated spaces. The affective atmospheres created in these exchanges helped participants transform thin or designated spaces into dynamic thick places. The paper closes with a discussion of the role thick places might play in the design of innovative youth development efforts in urban settings.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 25-07-2019
Publisher: Emerald
Date: 06-11-2017
DOI: 10.1108/JMHTEP-09-2016-0043
Abstract: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a complex condition characterized by a number of psychosocial difficulties that typically involve considerable suffering for in iduals with the condition. Recovery from BPD may involve specific processes such as work on how the self is perceived by the in idual with BPD and his or her relationships which differ from those common to recovery from other mental health conditions. The details of the processes that may best promote changes within the self and relationships are yet to be established. The paper aims to discuss these issues. In total, 17 consumers from a specialist BPD service were interviewed to identify factors they have experienced that contribute to recovery from BPD. Thematic analysis within a grounded theory framework was used to understand key themes within the interview data. The emphasis was on specific conditions of change rather than the more global goals for recovery suggested by recent models. Key themes identified included five conditions of change: support from others accepting the need for change working on trauma without blaming oneself curiosity about oneself and reflecting on one’s behavior. To apply these conditions of change more broadly, clinicians working in the BPD field need to support processes that promote BPD-specific recovery identified by consumers rather than focusing exclusively on the more general recovery principles previously identified within the literature. The specific factors identified by consumers as supporting recovery in BPD are significant because they involve specific skills or attitudes rather than aspirations or goals. These specific skills may be constructively supported in clinical practice.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 05-01-2019
Publisher: Emerald
Date: 08-05-2017
DOI: 10.1108/JMHTEP-09-2016-0044
Abstract: Recovery is an important concept within mental healthcare policy. There is a growing expectation that clinicians adopt approaches that align with the recovery principles, despite significant disagreements about what recovery-oriented interventions might look like in practice. It is also unclear how recovery may be relevant to personality disorder. This paper aims to discuss these issues. In total, 16 clinicians were interviewed at two mental health services in Melbourne, Australia. These clinicians had specialist training and experience in the treatment of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and provided insight regarding the meaning and relevance of the recovery paradigm in the context of BPD. Thematic analysis within a grounded theory approach was used to understand key themes identified from the interview data. Thematic analysis suggested that clinicians understand recovery in three distinct ways: as moving towards a satisfying and meaningful life, as different ways of relating to oneself and as remission of symptoms and improved psychosocial functioning. Clinicians also identified ways in which recovery-related interventions in current use were problematic for in iduals diagnosed with BPD. Different approaches that may better support recovery were discussed. This study suggests that practices supporting recovery in BPD may need to be tailored to in iduals with BPD, with a focus on cultivating agency while acknowledging the creative nature of recovery. Clinicians are in a strong position to observe recovery. Their insights suggest key refinements that will enhance the ways in which recovery in BPD is conceptualized and can be promoted.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 13-02-2017
DOI: 10.1007/S11013-017-9522-2
Abstract: The recovery approach is now among the most influential paradigms shaping mental health policy and practice across the English-speaking world. While recovery is normally presented as a deeply personal process, critics have challenged the in idualism underpinning this view. A growing literature on "family recovery" explores the ways in which people, especially parents with mental ill health, can find it impossible to separate their own recovery experiences from the processes of family life. While sympathetic to this literature, we argue that it remains limited by its anthropocentricity, and therefore struggles to account for the varied human and nonhuman entities and forces involved in the creation and maintenance of family life. The current analysis is based on an ethnographic study conducted in Australia, which focused on families in which the father experiences mental ill health. We employ the emerging concept of the "family assemblage" to explore how the material, social, discursive and affective components of family life enabled and impeded these fathers' recovery trajectories. Viewing families as heterogeneous assemblages allows for novel insights into some of the most basic aspects of recovery, challenging existing conceptions of the roles and significance of emotion, identity and agency in the family recovery process.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 04-03-2015
DOI: 10.3109/09638237.2014.954692
Abstract: Existing reports of the environmental aspects of recovery from mental illness have been confined to consideration of community spaces and the natural environment. This paper aims to extend this literature by assessing the role of psychiatric settings in recovery. Nineteen inpatients from the psychiatric unit of a large inner city hospital in Melbourne, Australia, took part in the study, which involved semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Analysis identified three major themes concerning consumers' experience within the unit: the importance of staff lack of clear architectural identity resulting in confused or confusing space and limited amenity due to poor architectural design. These findings have important implications for the delivery of care in psychiatric environments in ways that promote well being within these settings, and align with relevant mental health policy recommendations.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 29-04-2015
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 25-10-2010
Abstract: This article explores the work of French thinker Gilles Deleuze and argues for the application of his central ideas to the study of health and human development. Deleuze’s work furnishes a host of ontological and epistemological resources for such analysis, ushering in new methods and establishing new objects of inquiry. Of principal interest are the inventive conceptualizations of affect, multiplicity and relationality that Deleuze proposes, and the novel reading of subjectivity that these concepts support. This article introduces a developmental ethology in exploring Deleuze’s contributions to the study of human development and its varied courses and processes. Taken from a Deleuzean perspective, human development will be characterized as a discontinuous process of affective and relational encounters. It will be argued further that human development is advanced in the provision of new affective sensitivities and new relational capacities. This course is broadly consistent with existing approaches to human development — particularly those associated with Amartya Sen’s capabilities model — with the considerable advantage of offering a more viable working theory of the ways in which developmental capacities are acquired, cultivated and maintained. A provisional research agenda consistent with this developmental ethology is offered by way of conclusion.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 18-12-2019
Abstract: What kind of common project is Coworking? Coworking was first presented as a novel model for organising autonomous, authentic and creative labour amid a community of workers who share these progressive aspirations. That this promise has not always been realised in practice has provoked a strong sense of ambivalence among many Coworkers. This article offers a critical assessment of this ambivalence, which we approach by way of a novel theoretical category, an affective commons. Such a commons describes the atmospheric product of the immaterial labour of Coworkers, including the ‘commoning’ processes by which the community endorsed in accounts of the appeal of Coworking may manifest. In this respect, ambivalence about Coworking may be regarded as an effect of conflicts that arise in the shared work of commoning, particularly conflict over the capture and commodification of pooled resources, and fair acknowledgement of the contributions labouring bodies make to their circulation and reproduction. We argue that this ambivalence emerges from Coworking arrangements themselves, rather than the broader conditions of precarity that characterise much nonstandard work. We close with a brief discussion of the practical implications of our analysis for ongoing efforts to address this ambivalence and sustain the mutualism of Coworking.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2011
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2004
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2009
DOI: 10.1016/J.DRUGPO.2008.08.002
Abstract: The city has become a defining feature of contemporary human experience, supporting erse risk and enabling environments. Whilst urban risk environments have been the subject of numerous innovative research projects in recent years, the figure of the enabling environment is less well understood. This paper seeks to develop this figure through reference to recent scholarship in social theory, human geography and urban sociology. This figure will be illustrated throughout with data drawn from various qualitative research projects conducted in Melbourne, Australia and Vancouver, Canada. This qualitative research highlights the array of enabling characteristics present in urban drug use contexts, characteristics that have yet to be fully explored in relation to the development of innovative settings-based harm reduction strategies. This research draws attention to the ways particular urban settings support the development of affective and relational networks of "social repair" vital to the maintenance of health and wellbeing. These enabling characteristics serve to build social ties and enhance local networks increase belonging and "connection to place" and reinforce local "cultures of care". They also represent resources of enormous potential for harm reduction policy and practice. Greater attention to the array of assets and opportunities present in urban settings offers fresh insights into the nature of enabling environments and their role in reducing drug related harms and facilitating healthy growth and development.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 05-2010
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 04-2019
DOI: 10.1016/J.SOCSCIMED.2019.02.045
Abstract: In recent years much health research across the social sciences and humanities has undergone a noticeable, albeit by no means cohesive or comprehensive, 'turn' towards a posthumanist theoretical orientation. This paper reviews the radical ideas about health's emergence that have accompanied this turn, noting the core processes that are understood to always be in play. In particular, while acknowledging that not all humanistic ideas have been rejected in this work, it describes how some have been reworked and extended in 'other-than-fully conscious' and 'more-than-human' terms. The paper assesses and synthesizes this erse literature, emphasising the novel understandings of corporeality, materiality, assemblage, relationality, vitality and affect that have become distinctive features of it.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2018
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2017
DOI: 10.1016/J.DRUGPO.2017.07.005
Abstract: Harm reduction policy and praxis has long struggled to accommodate the pleasures of alcohol and other drug use. Whilst scholars have consistently highlighted this struggle, how pleasure might come to practically inform the design and delivery of harm reduction policies and programs remains less clear. The present paper seeks to move beyond conceptual critiques of harm reduction's 'pleasure oversight' to more focused empirical analysis of how flows of pleasure emerge, circulate and, importantly, may be reoriented in the course of harm reduction practice. We ground our analysis in the context of detailed ethnographic research in a drug consumption room in Frankfurt, Germany. Drawing on recent strands of post-humanist thought, the paper deploys the concept of the 'consumption event' to uncover the manner in which these facilities mediate the practice and embodied experience of drug use and incite or limit bodily potentials for intoxication and pleasure. Through the analysis, we mapped a ersity of pleasures as they emerged and circulated through events of consumption at the consumption room. Beyond the pleasurable intensities of intoxication's kick, these pleasures were expressed in a range of novel capacities, practices and drug using bodies. In each instance, pleasure could not be reduced to a simple, linear product of drug use. Rather, it arose for our participants through distinctive social and affective transformations enabled through events of consumption at the consumption room and the generative force of actors and associations of which these events were composed. Our research suggests that the drug consumption room serves as a conduit through which its clients can potentially enact more pleasurable, productive and positive relations to both themselves and their drug use. Acknowledging the centrality of pleasure to client engagement with these facilities, the paper concludes by drawing out the implications of these findings for the design and delivery of consumption room services.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 17-12-2016
Abstract: The purpose of this article is to introduce Manuel DeLanda’s “assemblage theory” to psychology. Based on a select review of this theory, we argue that DeLanda’s work may allow for new ways of approaching unresolved problems in psychological inquiry, such as the realism–constructivism impasse, and disputes regarding linear and non-linear models of causality. DeLanda’s systematic treatment of the assemblage, using terms familiar to social scientists and analytic philosophers alike, offers a host of novel concepts and methods for the analysis of social, biological, and/or political systems, while also indicating how this analysis may be deployed in innovative social science inquiry. A number of psychologists have recently begun to explore the concept of assemblage. We add to these efforts in the present paper by assessing how DeLanda’s assemblage theory may open up a new “image of the psychological” to guide research and practice.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 17-07-2013
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2014
DOI: 10.1016/J.DRUGPO.2013.10.014
Abstract: 'Context' is one of the most enduring analytical devices in social science accounts of alcohol and other drug (AOD) use, although its elaboration tends to emphasise macro-structural processes (like economic change, law enforcement, health policy, racism or stigma) at the expense of more finely-grained understandings of the place and time of consumption. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's notion of the assemblage, and its reception in recent critical geographies of AOD use, I will characterise context as an assemblage of social, affective and material forces. Such a characterisation is not indifferent to the range of structural forces that are often understood to mediate AOD use. Rather, it is concerned to document how these forces actually participate in the modulations of consumption. The assemblage will thus be construed in ways that align context with the 'real conditions' (place and time) of drug use. I will develop this argument by way of a case study drawn from a recent qualitative study of the social contexts of meth hetamine use in Melbourne. My goal is to document the ways 'context' is produced in the activity of drug use, and how 'context' so constructed, comes to modulate this use. By contrasting traditional approaches to the analysis of context with methods borrowed from Deleuze, I aim to transcend structural understandings of context in order to clarify the active, local and contingent role of contexts in the mediation of what bodies do 'on' and 'with' drugs.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 23-06-2011
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 12-2013
DOI: 10.1111/CISO.12025
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2022
DOI: 10.1016/J.DRUGPO.2022.103740
Abstract: From a developmental-psychological perspective, young people's recovery from drug misuse requires building up internal resilience and mobilising external resources to develop and maintain a shield of invulnerability. Vulnerability, in this context, is typically understood in terms of the material, social and/or affective conditions of drug use. These conditions are often targeted in prevention and intervention efforts, while also featuring in the emergence of recovery-oriented policy and treatment agendas internationally. In these ways, drug treatment programs implicitly impose vulnerability as a pre-condition to justify intervention and control, just as vulnerabilities are reproduced through the physical and social isolation that in iduals experience in treatment. In this article we challenge normative understandings of recovery that regard vulnerability as an inherent condition of 'risk' and 'relapse' for those 'in recovery'. The article bridges interdisciplinary research to offer an analysis grounded in Deleuzian ideas for understanding vulnerability - an area for which his philosophy has been largely overlooked. As the case of recovery unravels, we analyse vulnerability in recovery as affirmative as an ongoing transformative force of becoming-well.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 04-09-2016
Abstract: This article investigates recovery from mental health problems with reference to recent geographical analysis of affective atmospheres. In so doing, my research responds to recent calls to clarify the ways social, spatial and political factors may promote or impede recovery. As it is normally deployed, the notion of recovery emphasises the deeply personal character of rehabilitation from mental illness. It describes neither the full restoration of health (as a return to some ‘pre-morbid’ condition), nor the symptomologies characteristic of chronic illness, introducing the need for new ways of conceiving of a kind of health in illness. Throughout my analysis, I will treat recovery as an emergent capacity to manipulate the affects, spaces and events of a body’s “becoming well”. The always-unfinished event of recovery links human and nonhuman spaces, bodies, objects and forces in the joint expression of an enhanced capacity to affect (and be affected by) other bodies and spaces. I ground this discussion in analysis of ethnographic data collected in studies of recovery conducted in Melbourne, Australia. In presenting my findings, I will focus on three discrete atmospheres encountered in the course of this inquiry, and the ways these atmospheres modulated particular recovery events. In each instance, I will explore how atmospheres were encountered and co-constituted in the work of recovery, in the creation of an assemblage of health, and how these atmospheres gave social and material form to the process of becoming well. I will conclude by assessing how an attunement to affects, spaces and bodies may yield novel means of “staging” atmospheres of recovery in the promotion of an assemblage of health.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 07-01-2015
Abstract: Contemporary drug policy debates are riven by a protracted antagonism between discourses that emphasise addiction, habit and despair, and those that endorse recreation, pleasure and self-control. This article eschews this antagonism by examining drug use in relation to what Michel Foucault called an ethics of care. My goal is to begin to imagine how drug use may be governed otherwise, in ways that avoid the normalisation associated with existing policy responses to drug problems. I ground this discussion in qualitative research conducted in 2012 in Melbourne, Australia with 31 drug consumers, and 15 health service providers. I explore how consumers govern their own drug use, and how these practices fit within consumers’ broader efforts to promote or maintain their health. I then use these findings to sketch a novel approach to drug policy formulation, less concerned with the amelioration of drug problems and more interested in promoting an ethics of care.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2019
DOI: 10.1016/J.JAGING.2019.04.002
Abstract: Recent years have witnessed the beginnings of a posthumanist turn in critical/cultural gerontology. This is a turn that is partly demanded by, and provides means for illuminating, the posthuman social condition that older people experience in the twenty-first century. That has incorporated contributions from a range of theoretical and empirical traditions including new materialisms, non-representational theory, science and technology studies, arts, performance and sensory studies. A turn that, decentring the human subject, has envisaged aging as a distributed process involving multiple interacting living/biological and material/technological actors and excessive forces. This paper describes three ontological understandings of the vital emergence and expression of aging that the turn has ultimately generated (aging emerging and expressed through relational material assemblages aging enacted and performed by open vital bodies with vibrant objects aging in immediate, pre-personal, more-than-representational space-times). It then describes how, rather than being sidelined, four longstanding humanistic concerns have been reimagined in scholarship in 'more-than-human', 'other-than-fully conscious' terms (meaning, disadvantage, agency, communication). It is suggested that together these understandings and reimaginings constitute an open theory on aging, and a possible way to frame future studies. However, acknowledging that there is still much to do, the paper concludes with some thoughts on future challenges and possibilities for posthumanist research on aging.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-2012
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-09-2018
DOI: 10.1111/ADD.13966
Start Date: 2019
End Date: 2021
Funder: Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2014
End Date: 2016
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2020
End Date: 2022
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 06-2014
End Date: 12-2017
Amount: $239,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 01-2021
End Date: 06-2024
Amount: $567,500.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
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