Commentary
Assemblages, territories, contexts

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2015.10.003Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Introduces ‘assemblage thinking’ for contemporary drug studies.

  • Reviews how ‘assemblage thinking’ has developed in recent geographies of drug use.

  • Argues that ‘assemblage’ may replace ‘subject’ and ‘context’ as a unique unit of empirical analysis.

  • Explores the implications of ‘assemblage thinking’ for drug policy debates.

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.

Section snippets

The assemblage as a novel unit of analysis

It should prove useful to introduce assemblage thinking by way of its contrasts with more conventional methods of social science inquiry, and their adoption in contemporary drug studies (see Duff, 2014). Consider the following account of a young person's AOD use, and its temporal and spatial trajectories:

Simon began drinking at 14 following the divorce of his parents. He goes to live with his Dad who is often absent from home. He sees his Mother and sister rarely. Most of his friends drink

What is an assemblage?

The “realist ontology” (DeLanda, 2006:3–4) that informs the analysis of assemblages does not abandon the subject, much less the realities of social life, yet it does refuse to accept either subjects or contexts as ontological foundations for empirical inquiry. Subjects and their social interactions are not “given” in experience as ontological invariants expressive of a particular set of “essences” or qualities (DeLanda, 2006:1–5). Rather, both subjects and the social lives they participate in

Assemblages: social, affective and material

The production of social life provides obvious examples of how the assemblage may be used as a novel unit of analysis for contemporary drug studies. Social life is almost always characterised in terms of processes that bring together diverse entities in some kind of shared or collective experience (DeLanda, 2006: 52–57). This understanding of the ways sociality is comprised by entities and their collective experiences is not so different from Deleuze and Guattari's interest in the ways

Drug assemblages

So how might assemblage thinking be put to work in the analysis of alcohol and other drugs, and their forms, patterns and consequences? The first point is to emphasise how the assemblage may serve as a unique unit of analysis for empirical research. Above all else, assemblage thinking emphasises the significance of relations, affects and materials in the conditioning of AOD use, rather than the subjects, agents, structures and forms that populate more conventional social research (Dewsbury, 2011

Acknowledgements

I thank Stewart Williams for thoughtful and productive advice on an earlier version of this commentary. This research was partially funded with the award of a Vice-Chancellor's Senior Research Fellowship at RMIT University.
Conflict of interest statement: The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest.

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