Tracing The Event of Drug Use. Context and The Coproduction of A Night Out On MDMA (Ella Dilkes-Frayne, 2014)

Contemporary Drug Problems 41/Fall 2014 445
Tracing the event of drug

use: Context and the
coproduction of a night out
on MDMA
BY ELLA DILKES-FRAYNE
In this article I propose that current research addressing the

mediating role of context in youth illicit drug use can be
complemented by examining drug use events. Events analyses
capture the temporality, dynamism, and multiplicity often lacking
in research into contexts of use. Drawing on Actor Network Theory,
I conceptualize the drug-use event as a process of successive
mediations, whereby shifting relations bring about transformations
and actions including drug use. The methodological aspects of
tracing drug-use events are discussed before an account of an
event in which a young man takes MDMA at a music festival in
Melbourne, Australia. Building on this account, I illustrate the
value of this approach for rethinking how we conceive of contextual
influences on drug use, and suggest how analyzing events could
assist the project of harm reduction.
KEY WORDS: Event, Actor Network Theory, drug use, young people,
context, Australia.
AUTHORS NOTE: I am very grateful to Cameron Duff, Lenore Manderson,

Frederik Bhling, and the two anonymous Contemporary Drug Problems
reviewers for their highly constructive comments on earlier versions of this
article. I give special thanks to Michael for his extended involvement in the
research. This doctoral research was funded by an Australian Postgraduate
Award and the School of Psychology and Psychiatry, Monash University.
For additional information about this article e-mail: ella.dilkes-frayne
@monash.edu..
2014 by Federal Legal Publications, Inc.
Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

446 CONTEXT, COPRODUCTION AND MDMA
Current approaches to examining contexts of drug use tend to

emphasize broad macrostructural social or cultural factors that
are unable to explain the diversity of drug use practices evident
within these contexts (Duff, 2007; 2014). Despite increasing
attention to the specific social and spatial features of local set-
tings in which drug use takes place, identifying how various
aspects of these settings are involved in generating particular
drug use practices remains a challenge. In this article I propose
that studying events of use can supplement examinations of
context by bringing together the social, spatial, material and
temporal aspects of drug use, while remaining sensitive to the
complex and dynamic nature of these relations. Drawing on the
work of Latour (1999), Stengers (2000), and Gomart and
Hennion (1999), I present a conceptualization of the event that
enables the examination of the relational coproduction of drug
use. I characterize a drug use event as a process of successive
mediations, whereby the shifting relations of the event bring
about a series of transformations and actions including drug
use. Using methodological principles from Actor Network
Theory (ANT) for tracing events, I provide a case study of a
young man taking MDMA at a music festival in Melbourne,
Australia. I conclude by discussing how this events approach
extends research into drug use contexts, and consider how we
might enable humans, drugs, and spaces to act in the generation
of events characterized by harm reduction.
From context to event
Context is often used in alcohol and other drug (AOD)

research to refer to a set of broad structural factors such as
social, economic and political forces (e.g., Roche et al., 2009).
While this notion of context may be useful for explaining how
peoples attitudes and behaviors are influenced by wider his-
torical and cultural norms, when expressed in this way, context
is left everywhere and nowhere, operating at all places and
times but rarely leaving a material trace (Duff, 2013, p. 169).
Such a conceptualization is unable to account for the diversity

447
of drug-use practices, experiences, effects, pleasures, risks,

and harms, which are highly context-specific (e.g., Duff, 2008;
Duff, Johnston, Moore, & Goren, 2007; Rhodes, 2009;
Zinberg, 1984). The evident diversity and specificity of drug
use practices thus requires an approach that is able to demon-
strate how such contexts mediate specific events of drug use.
There remains a need to bring together spatial, material and

temporal aspects of more immediate contexts of use alongside
social and cultural processes. Ethnographic and other qualita-
tive research has been instrumental in detailing the complexi-
ties of specific immediate contexts of illicit drug use, club-
bing, drug dealing, and related practices (e.g., Bourgois, 1995;
Briggs, 2013; Fitzgerald, 2009; Malbon, 1999; Maher, 1997).
However, it has been common in AOD research to under-theo-
rize the roles of space and place, which are often treated as
passive and peripheral (Duff, 2007; Jayne, valentine, &
Holloway, 2008). Notable exceptions have demonstrated how
atmospheric and material features of nightclubsmusic,
sound, lighting, darkness, crowds, layout of rooms, cushions,
couches, dance floors, and chill out roomsinfluence peo-
ples movement and behavior, enable particular performative
practices, and contribute to corporeal experiences and pleas-
ures of drug use (Bhling, this issue; Duff, 2008; Duff, 2012;
Fitzgerald, 1998; Malbon, 1999). Moreover, spatial environ-
ments have been described as enfolding into drug-using bodies
such that objects and spaces become intimately tied up with
bodily practices and capabilities (Malins, Fitzgerald, &
Threadgold, 2006; Vitellone, 2010).
In addition to social, spatial and material features of contexts,

however, a focus on the temporal dimensions structuring
events of drug use is also needed. As Fraser (2006) has argued
in relation to methadone maintenance treatment, space and
time must be considered together as co-constituting. Space-
times, such as the queue at methadone dosing points, for exam-
ple, are crucial in the materialization and production of subjec-
tivities and actions (Fraser, 2006). Research into recreational

illicit drug use, however, rarely pays significant attention to

the temporal aspects of nights out, peoples movement through
various spaces and/or the centrality of time in this process.
Moreover, focusing primarily on the time and place of con-
sumption overlooks how factors outside the site of consump-
tion influence what takes place within it, and how movement
into, out of, and between venues influences drug use. Another
distinct limitation in research on recreational illicit drug use is
the tendency to take contexts and spaces as singular, whereby
it becomes difficult to account for the multiple practices that
they generate, or how they themselves are enacted multiply.
I propose that examining drug use events provides an empiri-

cal basis to draw together the social, spatial, material, and tem-
poral aspects of drug use, fruitfully supplementing current
approaches to context. Examining events illuminates the mul-
tiple factors that are active in mediating how specific instances
of drug use unfold, and captures the temporality, dynamism
and multiplicity of contexts. This approach actively seeks to
maintain the complexity evident in events rather than seeking
simplicity and generalizability (Law, 2004). My understanding
of events draws on conceptual and methodological tools from
ANT and Science, Technology and Society (STS) studies. The
particular advantage of using ANT for the study of contexts
lies in its attention to the formative relations within heteroge-
neous collectives of spatial features, objects, drugs and other
actors (Duff, 2012; 2013; Vitellone, 2011). However, some
further conceptual work is needed in order to employ ANT for
the purpose of examining drug use events.
Drawing the event from ANT
The conception of event I propose below draws on the ANT

notions of mediation and the collective production of agencies.
Mediation is a central feature of ANTs theory of action. In
ANT analyses, any thing that makes a difference to a state of
affairs is considered an actor (Latour, 2005). Actors enter

449
into mediating relations with other actors such that they gen-
erate transformations in those acted upon. This transformation
could change the form and attributes of an actor, its agency, or
capacity to act, or invite it into acting and generating media-
tions in others. As Latour (2005) notes, rather than an actor
being seen as a source of initiative or a starting point (p.
216), an actor is what is made to act by many others (p. 46).
Actors are thus both mediating and mediated, gaining their
ability to act in particular ways through their associations with
other actors. In this way, action is never attributable to any sin-
gle actor; action becomes collective, the result of a chain of
mediations involving numerous entities.
Mediation does not, however, remove an actors agency. Latour

(2005) suggests that mediation does not equate to dominating,
limiting or enslaving actors (p. 217). Rather, things might
authorize, allow, afford, encourage, permit, suggest, influence,
block, render possible, forbid, and so on (p. 72). While medi-
ation may trigger the action of another, it does not determine
the following action or cause one to act in a specific way.
Actors have an effect, but the resulting action on the part of the
mediated actor is unexpected (Latour, 2005, p. 106).
While the terms human and nonhuman are often used to

refer to different kinds of actors, to draw a distinction between
individual kinds of actors (at least prior to examination) is
problematic in ANT terms. To do so assumes a rigid distinction
between the two, which is something that ANT scholarship has
specifically sought to move beyond (Latour, 2005). Further-
more, it is not always clear, or analytically necessary to define,
which classification actors belong to (think, for example, of a
media report, a police person with a sniffer dog, or sunny
weather). Rather than classifying things as human or nonhu-
man, ANT analyses remain open to the full range of possible
actors; as Sayes (2014) observes, It is the action itself that is
the important thing to trace, regardless of whether this action
is locatable in humans or nonhumans (p. 145). It follows that
agency in ANT is not equated with intentionality and will, nor

are all actors seen to have the same kind of agency or act with
the same intensity (Sayes, 2014). Nonhumans do not exercise
agency in the precise senses in which humans do (Sayes,
2014, p. 144), even though human action and agency are
regarded as the result of collective mediation involving actors
that are not only human. I return to this notion of the human
and nonhuman in the following section in relation to the prin-
ciple of symmetry in generating accounts of events. For now it
is important to note that the inclusion of both human and non-
human actors in the examination of mediation relations is par-
ticularly useful for the exploration of the role of spaces, drugs,
people, and so on, in the collective generation of the agencies
and action involved in drug use.
Another important feature of this mediating relationship for

the study of contexts of drug use is the observation that actors
need not be in close spatial or temporal proximity to have an
effect (Latour, 2005). Actors from other times and places may
be active through the mediations they have effected on the cur-
rently assembled actors. The relations informing the immedi-
ate situation may therefore arise from outside a specific spatial
and temporal location, opening up the boundaries of what we
consider to be the context of action.
While the concept of mediation is useful for thinking through

the immediate and more distal relations between actors, the
concept of event more effectively captures ongoing processes
of mediation between a multitude of actors undergoing con-
stant formation, transformation and dissolution. Event
enables attendance to the temporal and fluid aspects of medi-
ating relations rather than drawing analysis towards stasis and
finality. Despite its compatibility with ANTs theory of action,
event as a concept has not been greatly articulated in ANT
scholarship. It briefly arises within the writing of Bruno
Latour (1999), a key figure in ANT, and Isabelle Stengers
(2000), a philosopher of science whose work has been widely
influential within ANT.

451
Latour (1999) characterizes events as occasions given to dif-

ferent entities to enter into contact (p. 141). According to
Stengers (2000), within these occasions of entities meeting,
the activity of mediation occurs (p. 99). Latour (1999) adds
that the process of things coming together allow[s] the enti-
ties to modify their definitions (p. 141), changing their attrib-
utes and competencies. An event, therefore, establishes a dif-
ference between before and after (Stengers, 2000, p. 67), such
that all participants leave their meeting in a different state
from the one in which they entered (Latour, 1999, p. 127).
However, while the event creates the possibility of transforma-
tion, the event itself does not dictate what transformation will
occur (Latour, 1999; Stengers, 2000). The event is thus a
process by which actors are collected, invited into mediating
relations, and transformed in unpredictable ways, generating a
new state of affairs.
The notion of event also arises in the work of Emilie Gomart

and Antoine Hennion (1999) who see the use of event as a
shift of focus, from the question of who acts? (p. 221) to
what occurs (p. 225). Gomart and Hennion propose that
focusing on mediation and events makes it possible to
describe the emergence of an effect by referring not to agents
but to that which lets/makes happen (p. 226). Further, they
suggest that focusing on events allows the recognition of trans-
formations that are not easily characterized as action, such
as passion, emotion, being dazzled, elation, possession, trance
(p. 226). These transformations in modes of being that are gen-
erated through mediation may in turn generate action. Thus, in
tuning in to events we are able to examine both actions, and
transformations that generate actions, that emerge through
processes of mediation between collectives of actors.
Drug use
as event
The event of drug use is characterized here as a process of suc-
cessive mediations, generating a series of transformations and
actions including drug use. In the event, the relations that col-
lectively generate drug use arise, come together for a time in
shifting configurations, and fall apart. Rather than an act of

momentary consumption or a period of psychoactive drug

effects, drug use is conceived of as a range of actions and
transformations that are both an effect and a generator of the
unfolding of the event. The event is an occasion in which peo-
ple, drugs, spatial features, and so on come together to produce
the act of consumption and a period of psychoactive effects
(and a multitude of further mediations) specific to this event.
Actors of varying kinds are enmeshed and co-constituting, col-
lectively unfolding the event.
Drug use emerges as a relational effect rather than the result of

the action of individual people, or the overarching structuring
power of context. Instead of each having stable properties that
endure throughout an event, people, contexts, and drugs are
recast here as actors undergoing constant transformation.
While studying a context of drug use implies stasis and singu-
larity, studying events with a focus on the process of context
adds a sensitivity to the temporality and dynamism of mediat-
ing relations. This approach brings into question the times and
places of relevance to drug use, allowing examination of medi-
ations that feed into and out of the times and places of con-
sumption and intoxication. It also enables consideration of
how particular contextual features may be enrolled in multiple
events, generating multiple concurrent mediations with differ-
ent outcomes for action.
Generating an account of an event
The task of accounting for complex events, and the shifting

network of human and nonhuman actors they assemble, pres-
ents numerous methodological challenges. While ANT does
not dictate particular methods for doing research, its assertions
can be seen primarily as methodological principles (Latour,
2005; Law, 2004; Sayes, 2014). Here I address how I adapted
select principles from ANT to develop accounts that catch
and maintain the complexity and messiness expressed in the
relationality of the event (Law, 2004). The broader research

453
project was designed to explore the role of licensed venues and

music festivals in mediating recreational illicit drug use among
18- to 24-year-olds in Melbourne, Australia. Employing an
ethnographic methodology, data generation entailed partici-
pant observation, in-depth interviews with young people, and
participant-written diaries followed by diary-interviews.*
In producing accounts with research participants, I drew on

Latours (2005) notion of tracing mediating relations.
Tracing requires that the associations mediating actors must be
fully accounted for rather than simply assumed (Latour, 2005).
This serves as a reminder not to fall into explanations of action
based on macro social forces or other factors that are unable
to be clearly demonstrated as evidently active in the situation
under study. The task is to trace chains of relation and the
transformations that have been effected on actors in the
process of mediation. Latour (2005) encourages researchers to
learn from the actors what makes up their set of associations
(p. 2) to allow actors of all kinds to offer descriptions of
themselves, to produce scripts of what they are making others
humans and non-humans do (p. 79). This is challenging
in events populated by momentary relations between a multi-
tude of actors, particularly given that some actors (such as
objects) may quickly recede into the background (Latour,
2005, p. 79). It becomes necessary to employ methods that
trigger moments of visibility and allow all kinds of actors to
speak, to provide their own accounts and engage in the trac-
ing of events (Latour, 2005).
Although qualitative research methods are well developed for

following human accounts of action, for ANT purposes, efforts
need to be made to account for other actors, including nonhu-
mans. In the present study, I used the diary, diary-interview
(DDI) method (adapted from Latham, 2004 and Zimmerman &
Wieder, 1977) within an ethnographic methodology to make
visible a greater range of actors and momentary associations
than may be possible in standard in-depth interview methods.
Following an initial in-depth interview, participants were invit-

ed to write a short diary after a day or night out at a licensed

venue or music festival, to be followed by an interview based
on that diary. Participants were encouraged to write in any
style, and cover any aspect of the event they wanted to recount,
including details of where they went and what they did.
Following the return of diaries, I developed a loose interview
guide based on the diary in order to tease out key details and
points of transition in the follow-up interview.
Latham (2004) notes that even when participant diaries are not
particularly comprehensive, they enable an in-depth discussion
of activities, encounters, and contextual features that are often
considered too routine, trivial or taken for granted to be men-
tioned in formal interviews. They therefore facilitate reflection
upon, and examination of, time-space relations and change,
and so provide resources for participants and researchers to
productively work through detailed situations and encounters.
This process enabled participants to be more engaged in tracing
and generating accounts than in-depth interviews alone, and
facilitated the generation of detailed accounts that included a
broad array of actors.
The account I present below highlights the range of actors and

complexity of relations involved in events of AOD use. The
account is based on the diary and diary-interview of one par-
ticipant, Michael (pseudonym), who, in early 2013, attended a
music festival where he took MDMA. When I met Michael in
late 2012 he was a 21-year-old full-time university student liv-
ing in suburban Melbourne. In two previous interviews, we
had discussed his current and past going out and illicit drug
use, which also informed the account presented here. My
analysis of the materials generated with Michael focuses on
points of change and transformation in his day and night at the
festival, and the mediations involved in the action, movement,
decisions, and feelings expressed within this event.
Some readers who regard ANT as a means of focusing on non-

human and technical elements of networks may be surprised

455
by the focus on Michael in the account that follows. This leads

me to clarify the ANT principle of symmetry. Latour (2005)
insists that ANT is not, I repeat not, the establishment of
some absurd symmetry between humans and non-humans
(p. 76) whereby humans and nonhumans are seen to be equal
or identical (as is often argued by critics of ANT; see Sayes,
2014). Rather, the principle of symmetry was a reaction to the
social and natural sciences that, ANT scholars argued, artifi-
cially imposed a division between the human and nonhuman
that is not given in the order of things (Latour, 2005; Law,
1994; 2004). Alternatively, ANT approaches the human and
nonhuman as produced together in the same processes, assert-
ing that each therefore ought to be explained in the same terms
(Callon, 1986; Law, 1994; 2004). This is not to imply that
asymmetries between actors do not exist; it simply asks that
we do not assume that they exist, and instead demonstrate how
they are generated (Latour, 2005). Therefore, while Michael is
unavoidably privileged in this account, focusing on a particu-
lar person is not incompatible, I believe, with the aims of ANT,
provided that the person is not treated as a sole and independ-
ent agent detached from their relations. My goal is to demon-
strate how the particular agencies and capacities afforded to
Michael within the relations of the event are collectively gen-
erated, rather than assuming that they are inherent and stable
properties necessarily existing within him.
In producing accounts, the chronology, duration, and bound-

aries of the event are open questions. Consistent with an ANT
approach, the event includes mediations by actors originating
in different times and places that impact (or act on) the
immediate relations of the festival. This means that events may
not have a clear or linear chronology. However, I present
Michaels account as a chronological sequence both for the
sake of the reader and because this was the form Michael
adopted in his diary. While Lathams (2004) and Zimmerman
and Wieders (1977) studies included weeklong diaries, in this
research the diaries were written for single days or nights out
because of the infrequency of these occasions among the par-

ticipants. Care was taken so that the diary format did not
delimit the boundaries of the event or account. Participants
were not specifically told at what point diaries should begin or
end, and the boundaries of the event were explored in the fol-
low-up interviews and data analysis by questioning the points
at which the most significant mediations relating to drug use in
the event occurred.
An event of MDMA use
In the account that follows, Michael takes a capsule of MDMA

at a large, urban, electronic music festival. This account illus-
trates how drug-use events unfold as a multitude of actors
come together in a process of successive mediations.
Buying a ticket While being in the festival grounds may ordinarily be consid-
ered the time and place in which a festivals characteristics may
act on its attendees, the festivals characteristics mediated
Michaels actions long before the day of the festival or his con-
sideration of MDMA use. These mediations set in motion a
series of actions that continued through the day of the festival.
This summer music festival had been running for several years,
incorporating different genres of electronic dance music, and
hosting approximately 50,000 young people. Having attended a
number of similar festivals in the past, Michael had decided
that [hed] had enough of festivals and ... wasnt going to any
more (interview excerpt). At past festivals, he had found the
large crowds to be drunk, aggressive, and not interested in the
music; the music sets to be too short; the presence of police
sniffer dogs to be unsettling; and it had been difficult to stick
with groups of friends over the duration of the day. These
engagements with past festivals generated his disinterest in
attending future festivals; he wanted to listen to music while
being with friends and in some cases take MDMA. This seemed
to be incompatible with the festival format.

457
A number of factors came into play to open up the possibility

of Michael attending this festival. On the day the tickets went
on sale, four months before the festival, Michaels friend asked
him if he wanted to go: My mate said oh, do you want to go
and I said oh, probably not, he said [music act] is on the bill
so thats why I went. Michaels friend brought to his attention
the fact that a particular international music act was going to
be at the festival, and was not playing elsewhere. Michael was
uncertain whether he would have another chance to see this act
in the future. The problems he associated with the festivals
characteristics became less significant in light of the possibil-
ity of seeing this act, leading him towards attending the festi-
val. This act then played a significant role in mediating
Michaels engagement with the festival and how the event
unfolded.
Other factors were also important in enabling Michael to

attend the festival. Firstly, Michael said he would not have
gone alone, so his friends desire to go was crucial. Secondly,
Michael was financially able to afford to buy a ticketpriced
upwards of AUD$140at short notice. Hence, the festivals
characteristics and other enabling factors came together four
months before the festival day to generate both Michaels
desire and ability to attend the festival. The particular way in
which these factors came together later provided an occasion
for MDMA use, and mediated how this also unfolded.
MDMA enters
the event
Michael had been to a number of festivals in the past. At some
of these he had taken MDMA; at others he had not. The possi-
bility for MDMA use at this festival arose within the specific
relations of this event, as many factors came together prior to
the festival day to present the opportunity for the specific use
of one capsule of MDMA.
Michaels involvement in past events mediated this event in a

number of ways. At past festivals he had drunk alcohol, spend-
ing a lot of money and much of his day in queues for bars or
the tickets, tokens or cash needed to buy drinks. When used

over the duration of the day, alcohol had rather mediocre

effects, with a headache appearing even before the main acts
began. These experiences led Michael to avoid alcohol at this
festival, leaving him the options of going sober or enrolling
another drug into the event.
I asked Michael what had led to him having MDMA at the fes-
tival: Uh that [music act] was playing, and that I had the
stuff available, or that I still had some [left over]. Here, the
opportunity, desire, and ability to take MDMA at this festival
were generated in the coming together of the inclusion of a
particular music act, Michaels past enjoyment of taking MDMA
while seeing electronic music acts, and the availability of MDMA
on this occasion.
Michael did not always have convenient access to MDMA. On

this occasion he had one capsule (or cap) of MDMA powder
left over from a recent small bulk purchase of caps. Michael
did not have anyone in his social circle from whom he could
regularly buy MDMA. Moreover, he had a personal policy of
not buying illicit drugs from dealers at festivals or clubs
because he didnt trust the quality of ingredients of the drugs
they sold. His ability to form stable relations with sellers of
MDMA of a decent and reliable quality was thus limited. This
meant that when he had the opportunity to buy MDMA before
the summer he had bought a number of caps. This enabled him
to spontaneously decide whether or not to take MDMA on a
particular occasion, rather than planning use far in advance.
Over the summer period leading up to this festival, he had
taken and shared with friends caps from this purchase at vari-
ous club nights and DJ events. There was one cap left that had
not been earmarked for a particular night out.
This particular capsule contained approximately 210mg of

powder that, based on his past MDMA use, Michael identified
as not pure but still largely MDMA. The availability of this
particular cap of this particular substance at this particular
dose shaped this event in a number of ways. To begin with,

459
having only one cap precluded him from offering a cap to his
friend, as he had on past occasions, leading him to take it
alone. Additionally, had his stash contained something other
than this cap, LSD or speed for example, his options for use
would have been different. That he only had one cap at this
dose, combined with his lack of other purchasing options,
mediated his dosing options. He could have taken half, been
given more, or combined it with alcohol or other drugs.
However, these modifications were not necessary; at previous
events over the summer Michael had enjoyed caps from this
batch at similar doses, and was seeking to produce similar
effects in this event. Crucially, Michael assumed that the caps
that he bought were all made in the same batch. This enabled
him to consider the dosing and the effects of this cap to be rel-
atively stable, such that he could at least hope that this cap
would have a similar chemical consistency and relatively sim-
ilar effects to those he had taken previously. However, as many
participants in this research attested, this is a precarious stabil-
ity. Michael attempted to control this in order to produce an
event with enjoyable results, hoping that the MDMA would
not bring on negative feelings or no noticeable effects at all.
Ultimately, however, Michael would have to wait and see what
effects would be generated in this event.
Another important factor generating the possibility of MDMA

use at this festival was related to the after-effects that he
expected. We had discussed this in an interview following the
most recent time he had taken a cap from this batch of MDMA.
The day following use he had felt good, just relaxed and
happy with everything, and after around 2-3 days he felt not
tired, like depressed, more like mental like negative
thoughts and that (Michael, interview excerpt). However,
these expected effects alone did not mediate his use at this fes-
tival. The possible after-effects became important because of
his post-festival commitments, and the potentially mediating
interference of MDMA use with these commitments. The fes-
tival was held on a Sunday at the beginning of the university
academic year, and Michael had lectures the morning and

week following. It was possible that the after-effects would

interfere with his focus and concentration. However, because
of the time of year, Michaels only commitments were lec-
tures. He said, If Id had a test on Monday, Tuesday, I would-
nt have taken anything (interview excerpt). It was this partic-
ular combination of expected effects and post-festival concen-
tration requirements that mediated Michaels planned MDMA
use, presenting little impediment to MDMA.
Hence, a large number of factors went into generating the pos-

sibility of the use of a single cap of MDMA at this festival:
past events of alcohol use at festivals; Michaels enjoyment of
MDMA; the particular music at the festival; the availability of
a single MDMA cap from a batch used previously (related to
Michaels market access and past purchasing and use);
Michaels expectations of the intoxicating and after-effects of
the dose; and his post-festival commitments. This illuminates
how the specific relations between this collective of expected
festival characteristics, combined with particular aspects of
Michaels relations with university timetabling, financial resources,
and drug markets, for example, begin to mediate his drug use
long before the festival itself. These factors culminated in
Michaels arrival at the festival with MDMA he intended to
take. This also demonstrates the problem with considering the
time and place of the festival (or consumption and intoxica-
tion) to be the sole point of interest in explaining the drug use
that takes place at festivals.
Entering the
festival site
On the day of the festival, the site opened and the first acts
began at 12:00 p.m. Michael met his friend at a central railway
station to eat and travel to the festival site together, arriving at
around 2:00 p.m. The situation produced by Michael carrying
MDMA meant, however, that entering the festival became a
concern. The timetable showed the music act to be playing in
the final time slot of the evening. This timetabling, combined
with Michaels desire to be feeling the strongest MDMA
effects during the acts show, and the expected time between
MDMA consumption and the onset of these effects, meant that

461
he would be required to carry the MDMA through the festival

entrance. This produced concern in Michael because he
expected police with sniffer dogs to be searching for illicit
drugs at the entrance, and he did not want to be sniffed, pub-
licly searched, and potentially caught in possession of an illic-
it substance (see also Demant & Dilkes-Frayne, in press; Race,
2013). I asked Michael why he was expecting there to be snif-
fer dogs at the festival: Uh because its a dance music fes-
tival primarily [] and that it was in summer as well. [] I
thought it was the sort of [festival] where theyd put the dogs
out. It was not that the festival attendees might be engaging
in particularly high levels of illicit drug use that led Michael to
expect sniffer dogs at the entrance. The fact that the event was
a festival, held in summer, and playing dance music were also
important. Large summer music festivals attended by young
people were common and well-known sites of police sniffer
dog operations in Melbourne and around Australia; Michael
had seen sniffer dogs at past festivals, and there were regular
news media reports of arrests at almost all major music festi-
vals that summer (e.g., Toy & Rolfe, 2012).
Accordingly, Michael as an active mediator sought to both

modify his relations with the festival entrance space and to
enroll other actors into the collective in the hope of minimiz-
ing the chances of his coming into contact with a sniffer dog
and the possible detection of the MDMA. He pieced together
media reports and past experiences of police with dogs, the
layout of this particular festival site, the crowd flow, available
entrances, and transport options. He and his friend would be
able to enter the festival through an entrance with lower crowd
flow via public transport. Michael also sought to transform the
material properties of the cap by wrapping it in dental wax and
putting it in his mouth. The wax protected it from his saliva
while enabling it to stick and be concealed in his mouth. If,
however, the MDMA had come in a different form, or if he had
wanted to take in more caps, this strategy would have been
problematic. Furthermore, this mouth-wax-cap grouping was
time-limited: If he left it in his mouth too long the cap would

melt into the wax or he may swallow it; it was only designed
to last the time it took him to get through the entrance. Once
he had entered the festival the police and dogs became less of
a concern because they were less likely to be patrolling there
(although he recognized that this remained a possibility).
Here a particular grouping of actors expected to meet one

another at the festival entrance produced concern in Michael.
This transformation led him to act to mediate the relations
between himself, the festival entrance, the illicit MDMA, and
police with dogs. The success of his strategy, however,
remained largely outside his control. In the end, he entered the
festival and saw no sniffer dogs. The event, however, could
have unfolded rather differently had these actors come together
differently. This also highlights that the relations of interest to
Michael, in his attempt to produce an event that he might con-
sider to be harm-free, relate not only to the possible effects of
use, but also the possible effects of carrying MDMA.
Before
MDMA use
Over five hours passed between Michael entering the festival
and taking the MDMA. While Michael said that not much hap-
pened during this time, it was a major portion of his day and,
as becomes apparent, crucial to his enjoyment of the festival.
ELLA: What happened between that time when you arrived
and when you dropped [took the MDMA]?
MICHAEL: Yeah, we just chilled out at one stage for most of the
day, um I dont know, had an energy drink or something, and
yeah that was pretty much it. [...] We were just going to hang
out at the one stage during the day, because that was where
most of the acts we thought wed like were, and then my friend
wanted to see one or two other things as well so I just went
with him and saw those.
The festival site was laid out such that there were multiple
indoor and outdoor stages of varying sizes, playing different
genres of music. As a result of timetabling of acts at various
stages, and his friends similar tastes, Michael was able to see
acts from a genre of music that he enjoyed without moving
around the festival site too much or having to engage with the

463
large crowds that he had disliked at past festivals. Importantly,

no factors emerged during this time that interfered with
Michaels plans to take MDMA. Engaging with the festival in
this way for much of the day didnt generate any impeding
transformations, such as making him tired or frustrated, meet-
ing with unexpected sniffer dogs, or losing his MDMA, for
example. Instead, he simply hung out with his friend and lis-
tened to music he enjoyed.
Time and
place of
Michael wrote in his diary that he ended up taking the MDMA
consumption
at around 7:15pm. We discussed what led him to this particu-
lar consumption time:
ELLA: What was happening at that time that made you think
that was a good time to do it?
MICHAEL: [Laughs] I think I had a little debate with my friend
and sort of did a little maths and counting back [...]
ELLA: So what was it you were counting back from?
MICHAEL: Oh, when [music act] was going to start.
Again here we see how the timetabling of the act mediated

Michaels MDMA use, now in relation to the timing of con-
sumption. He wanted to time the peak he expected with the
start of the act, and both he and his friend had previous expe-
rience with this batch of MDMA, which they used to roughly
calculate when that peak would most likely come on. After
some debate, they decided 7:15pm was the ideal consumption
time. This timing also related to his only having one capsule
with no plans to re-dose later on. Had alternative dosing
options been available, the timing may have altered.
The place of consumption was where they just happened to be

at 7:15 p.m. on a grass embankment to the side of one of the
outdoor stages. The crowd and stage layout were important for
enabling Michael to feel comfortable taking MDMA. He was
in plain view of everyone, though no one was really looking
(Michael, diary excerpt). During the interview he clarified:

[I]t was in plain view but I dont think anyone was looking at a
grass bank on the side, like the stages are everyones probably
looking at the stage. So I mean if someone had been specifically
looking at me they might have wondered what I was doing, but I
wasnt overly concerned, yeah ... If it was anyone that was at the
festival [looking] I dont think they would really care, and uh Im
not even sure they would know what it was. The closest person was
two, three meters away, yeah. If Id seen the police or security I
might have waited a minute.
While the grassy bank was in plain view, being in view was
not a concern because of the activity, characteristics, density
of the crowd, and the layout of the stage in relation to the bank.
The crowds attention was drawn away from the bank towards
the stage, and no one was too close. And besides, if any peo-
ple attending the festival chanced upon seeing him taking the
cap they would either be oblivious or unconcerned about the
sight of someone swallowing a capsule. The only people he
was concerned about were police or security, who would be
more likely to act negatively toward Michael if they saw his
cap. However, because of their transitory attention and move-
ment through the space, avoiding them was simple.
These mediations related to the particular mode of ingestion

afforded by the materiality of the capsule: a small object that
could be swallowed swiftly without attracting much attention
from passers by. A less conspicuous place may have been nec-
essary if he had, for example, had to snort, smoke or inject the
drug, involving more sound, fumes, paraphernalia, or comport-
ment that would appear out of place. Thus the crowd and spa-
tial relations of this particular time and place, and the material
properties of the capsule and its digestibility, enabled Michael
to feel comfortable and for his consumption to go unnoticed,
generating no hampering transformations.
Coming up
and peaking
After consumption, the MDMA and its mediations were trans-
formed; no longer a cap in a pocket, it became something with
a different action and form, as yet uncertain. However, the way
it acted on and transformed Michaels feelings, actions, and

465
relations were intricately tied up with the relations of the fes-

tival.
Enabled by the clear weather and the outdoor space, Michael

walked down to flat grass and laid down with friend, watched
sky, chatted with a few people as they walked past (diary
excerpt). Around this time, Michael began feeling the effects
of the MDMA, which he described as coming up.
ELLA: What happened at that time, what changed for you then
[with the effects of the MDMA]?
MICHAEL: Um I only really noticed it when I got up from lying
down on the grass, which I kind of expected because Ive had
that before, uh so what changed, I guess you just feel light
headed or your whole body feels lighter sort of thing, and
yeah, I dont know how to describe it, but yeah yeah you feel
different [laughs]
ELLA: Ok, so you were obviously feeling the effects of it. Did
that kind of influence why you got up? Or you were going to
get up and move around anyway?
MICHAEL: Um, it had been... I just looked at the time and I knew
it had been sort of long enough, and it sort of, when I was on
the ground it sort of, I might have felt a little bit but its sort of
hard to tell and I knew it had been half an hour or something
and I said well thats more than long enough so I thought if I
get up Ill definitely know whether its done anything or not.
Thus MDMA did not simply act alone to produce the feeling
of coming up. When he was on the ground, Michael found it
hard to tell whether he was feeling the effects, which was an
experience he recognizsed from previous events of use. He
knew he would have to act to change his relations with his sur-
roundingshis bodily position, the perceptual stimuli he was
receivingto know whether its done anything or not. Until
that point the MDMA could still have been a dudhad no
effector been something unexpected. The time here became
important: It had been sort of long enough for him to expect
that the MDMA would have made him feel different.
Through moving from his prone position he was able notice
it, that something had changed within him. This highlights

the relationality of the MDMAs effects. While the MDMA

acted as he expected it to, he, his body, and the environment
were required to play active roles to generate in him the feel-
ings of coming up.
As he and his friend moved into a large tent, Michael said he

was peakingexperiencing the most pronounced effects of
the MDMAand feeling good (diary excerpt). The effects
that Michael attributed to the MDMA were intimately tied to
how they mediated his relations with his surroundings, and
encouraged him to act in particular ways towards his friend and
the crowd. He felt he was now able to discuss particular topics
with his friend like feelings and girlfriends that were oth-
erwise more difficult (Michael, interview transcript). Such con-
versations, he said, helped to develop and strengthen their
friendship in ways that lasted long beyond the event of use. In
this way the event could be seen to be producing his broader
social context by developing such connections and bonds.
Similarly, with the change of space as they moved into the tent,
he encountered the crowd in closer proximity. He talked with a
number of people around him. Although Michael said that he
would have spoken to the people around him even if he wasnt
on MDMA, he also thought that the MDMA had an effect on
his interactions, enabling him to speak to and connect with
more people. Thus, the transformations generated in him with
the MDMA mediated his ability to act in ways that connected
him with the people around him. These interactions were also
enabled by his movement into a space populated by a crowd
who were also open to connecting. How Michael acted towards
the space, the crowd, his friend, and the ways in which they act
upon him, were mediated by the transformations he attributed
to the MDMA. What may ordinarily be considered the same
space, crowd and friend, come to have different effects; in con-
cert with the MDMA, they mediated him differently.
Main act
mosh pit
At around 7:50 p.m. Michael and his friend walked over to dif-
ferent arena to get good place to see closing act (diary excerpt).
We spoke about why it was important to get a good place:

467
ELLA: Where were you aiming for? What did you want?
MICHAEL: Ah, right up the front, just to be able to see them I guess.
ELLA: Like to actually be able to see the band
MICHAEL: Yeah yeah.
ELLA: Because if you were further back
MICHAEL: Yeah, definitely, as a short person [laughs]
ELLA: Ok so there would be people in your view
MICHAEL: Yeah I guess theres a different vibe right up the
front as well, everyone else whos made the effort to get up
there is probably really keen as well.
Michaels desire to be in a particular position in the space

right up the frontwas generated through his relative height to
the crowd, his desire to see the act, and the relations this posi-
tion afforded him with the act and the crowd. This position
enabled him to be with other enthusiasts and to talk with people
around him about their shared music interest, as they waited for
the act to begin. However, the relations of this space were again
transformed, when at nearly 9:00pm the act came on stage: As
soon as they come on, if you werent paying any attention,
youll know. The noise, everyone starts screaming (Michael,
interview excerpt). Michael wrote that the mosh pit got pretty
intense, fell over once, helped pick a girl up with some others ...
managed to get to second row from front [] lost the friend I
came to the festival with a few songs in.
When the act came on stage the whole environment changed,

becoming a hot, crowded, loud, jostling mass of people, sound,
and lights. Michaels movements were almost out of his con-
trol as he had to move with or against the bodies around him.
While he lost his friend early on, he was focused on watching
the act, getting into the music, and staying upright. It seemed
a very different kind of place to be taking MDMA than the
nightclubs we had previously talked about, and I asked him
whether he saw a difference in the effects of MDMA in that
environment:

Uh mmm yeah I guess you might feel a little bit more con-
nected with the people around you in a moshpit just because its so
intimate and that. And then just that its a lot more intense, like you
have to be aware of what youre doing, you cant be out of it,
whereas if youre in a club setting you can be off in your own little
world and thats not gonna matter.
The different relations of the mosh pit space required him to

act differently from how he might in a nightclub, and to mod-
ify the effect that the MDMA could have on him, depending on
what was required of him by his immediate environment. A
nightclub space enabled him to move his attention to his own
little world. A mosh pit, on the other hand, required a differ-
ent attention: you cant be out of it. The consequences of
being out of it were such that he was required to actively
mediate the potential mediations of the MDMA on his atten-
tion and his involvement with the relations of the space. He
found he was able to do this while connecting with the people
around him and enjoying the music.
The set continued for an hour and a half. During this time
Michael was pushed very close to the front barrier, where
because of the crowd density, his ability to move was severely
restricted. At that point he grew tired of the mosh pit, but he
was soon released when the act finished. The relations evident
here highlight the collective generation of the transformations
and actions of Michael, the MDMA, and the mosh pit space
(generated through the crowd, the music act, and the equipment
and layout of the stage space). The effect each had on the oth-
ers was produced by the particular way they all came together.
Going home The act finished at 10:15pm and with the conclusion of the
music timetabling, the festival cleared out pretty quickly
(Michael, interview excerpt). He waited to get some water and
to find his friend. Once they were re-united, they walked to the
train station to catch the train to the city. According to
Michael, he was no longer peaking, the MDMA was now
generating different feelings in him, such that he was still
going but coming down (Michael, diary excerpt). He and his

469
friend parted ways in the city to catch different trains home.

Michael chatted with other people who had been at the festi-
val; a number of people were drunk (some still drinking) or
otherwise intoxicated.
The spatiotemporal boundaries of the festival can be seen to be

particularly porous here if we attend to the mediations the fes-
tival brought into being: As the crowd spilled out of the festi-
val, the transformations it had made in people moved across
the city. Given that the train was the primary mode of public
transport to and from the festival and that it was late on a
Sunday night, many of its passengers were festival attendees,
and the train became an extension of the festival.
While returning home marked the end of Michaels day out,

this point is not necessarily the end of the event if significant
mediations continue. However, he had seen the act, his friend
was going home, it was Sunday night, he had university class-
es the following morning, and he was starting to feel tired. If he
waited too long the trains would finish and he would have to
catch an expensive taxi home. With different actors, this event
could have been extended far beyond this point. As it happened,
Michael arrived home soon after midnight and went to univer-
sity at around 10:00am the following morning to attend his lec-
tures as usual, with no untoward effects from his MDMA use.
The most significant mediations of this event had taken place.
Reflecting
on a good
Michael wrote that he and his friend had agreed all up had a
festival
good day and it was the best festival wed been to in ages
(diary excerpt). While my primary interest above was in Michaels
MDMA use and how it was generated in this event, it was not
only his MDMA use that might see this festival as a mediator of
future MDMA use or his attendance at future festivals. I asked
Michael to expand on what makes for a good festival:
I dont know as long as the crowds good and not really hostile at
all, and as long as you can get around to see the acts that you want
to see without having to queue up for everything and that sort of
thing, I guess that makes it good, and then I guess just the acts ...

[this festival] was just more chilled out and I was able to just enjoy
the music a bit more ... the stage we wanted to hang out at was less
busy, and probably because we werent drinking actually.
MDMA use didnt feature in the account he gave for why this fes-
tival had been so good, or for what makes for a good festival expe-
rience. A good crowd, good music, and being able to chill out
enough to enjoy it, were more important to generate an enjoyable
festival. Michaels movements, engagement, and enjoyment were
facilitated, in part, during this event by his ease in getting around
and the timetabling of the acts. These engagements were also
afforded by the transformations the MDMA generated in him, and
in how his use of it facilitated his avoidance of alcohol and the
queuing and ill-effects he had experienced from drinking alcohol
at past festivals. His MDMA use didnt interfere with any ele-
ments that made this festival enjoyable; rather it heightened his
enjoyment of one of his favorite music acts.
Just as past festivals mediated Michaels actions in this one, so

too this event will mediate his expectations and approach to
future festivals. Michael was transformed in this event into
someone who could enjoy a festival, with more experience of
MDMA use and knowledge of how to shape his relations into
an enjoyable experience. Importantly, however, Michael was
not transformed in some ways by this event, such as experienc-
ing any lasting harms, for example, although a number of
mediating relations could have intervened such that the event
unfolded differently. The particular transformations and
actions that were generated in this event that Michael identi-
fies as enjoyable, were enabled by the specific way in which
the relations of this festival came together, and not only the
mediations involving MDMA.
Discussion
In the approach I have presented here, an event of drug use is

characterized as a process of successive mediations, in which
many actors come together in shifting configurations, generat-

471
ing a series of transformations in each assembled actor or entity.

Drug use and its effects emerge relationally, both as the result
and generator of the unfolding of the event. Tracing events
according to the logic proposed above elicits greater sensitiv-
ity to emergence and contingency, and the role of actors and
forces beyond the human (see also Duff, 2014; Race, 2013).
This approach entails the production of an empirical account
of the place and time of drug use, in order to identify how var-
ious forces actually participate in drug use (Duff, 2014).
Moreover, it enables researchers to attend to the complexity
and messiness inherent in events, preserving their specificity
rather than producing simplicity and generalizations (Law,
2004).
Methodological challenges remain in terms of the possibility

of achieving symmetry and drawing the spatial and temporal
boundaries of drug use events. However, the key issue is how
differing accounts of events overlap with or depart from one
another, and how they might be made to hang together in pro-
ductive ways in order to address questions of relevance to drug
policy. Below, I discuss a few ways in which tracing events
provides opportunities for rethinking how we conceive of con-
textual influences on drug use, and suggest how analyzing
events could assist the project of harm reduction.
Event and
context
Tracing events provides a way of identifying how factors often
attributed to broad social and cultural contexts become active
in generating particular kinds of use and non-use events. If we
were to take a conventional approach to social or cultural con-
text, we may find a number of partially connected, overlapping
broader contexts in which Michael could be said to sit. These
may include the political and policy climate in relation to illic-
it drugs in Australia, mainstream or subcultural electronic
music scenes, normalization of the use of some illicit drugs
among young people, and so on. These contexts could be said
to exert a structural force, acting over Michael, constraining
and limiting his agency (Latour, 2005). While elements of
these processes certainly feature in the account presented here,

taking these to be the context in which Michaels drug use aris-

es would lack much explanatory capacity. Arguably any young
person attending this festival would be subject to these same
contexts, such that such an explanation would fail to account
for the particular way in which the event presented here dif-
fered from any other unfolding at this festival. It would cer-
tainly not account for the specificities of Michaels MDMA
use at the festival. Such an explanation would obscure partic-
ular local drug use practices in favor of forces seemingly
operating at all places and at all times (Duff, 2014, p. 3). On
the other hand, the approach to events I have taken enabled me
to account for the ways in which broader structural or contex-
tual factors (such as being a full-time student, financial
resources, access to drug markets, the legal status and policing
of MDMA, the popularity of large-scale music festivals, and
so on) feature in a specific instance of drug use without limit-
ing the agency of those involved.
Although this approach supports recent research on the active

mediating role of more immediate contexts, or places, in drug
use, there is a need to extend analyses of immediate consump-
tion contexts in three ways: to enable analysis beyond the
immediate time and place of consumption or intoxication; to
account for the dynamic and shifting nature of such spaces;
and to explore the multiple effects or agencies such spaces can
generate in different, concurrent events. I will briefly clarify
each of these points in turn.
Firstly, the account I have presented suggests the value of

opening up the temporal and spatial boundaries of the analysis
of drug use to follow chains of mediation that feed into and out
of the times and places of use. Rather than a single point in
time, a single decision, or a single drug effect, an event involv-
ing drug use moves through various times and spaces. An event
may include planning, preparing, purchasing, pre-loading,
transporting, arriving, moving within and between venues, dif-
ferent intoxication states, perhaps re-dosing or taking some-
thing else, going home, after effects, and so on. The times and

473
spaces of each of these aspects also shapes how they unfold,

mediating drug use from both within and beyond sites of con-
sumption. This logic draws attention to the mediations that
places such as festivals can bring into being long before and
after they actually take place, such as mediating the purchase
of MDMA or actions at future festivals, for example.
Similarly, distant or absent actors (such as sniffer dogs, media
reports, past events, university timetables) can be active along-
side immediate and local actors (such as crowds, barriers, and
friends) in transforming situated use practices. Tracing events
in the way described here enables the examination of factors
within and beyond the time and place of consumption, so illu-
minating transitions in events and a wider range of participat-
ing actors.
Secondly, the account presented here suggests the need to be

attentive to the dynamic and shifting nature of what we may
consider to be sites or immediate contexts of drug use. Venues,
such as the festival described here, not only consist of multiple
physical spaces with differing characteristics, but also the rela-
tions that make up these spaces shift over time. As music
changes, as darkness comes, as crowds flow in and out, as one
begins or ceases to feel the effects of a drug, the relations that
make up these spaces are transformed along with their mediat-
ing effects. Particular parts of situations become active as oth-
ers fall away, generating the unfolding of events. It therefore
appears more appropriate to examine shifting contextual rela-
tions over the course of an event, allowing contexts to become
fluid, to change.
Finally, the conception of a particular setting, such as a music

festival or a venue, as a context, a singular entity, denies both
the dynamic nature of relations and the possibility of contex-
tual features having multiple effects and generating multiple
practices. Contexts are themselves made within the action of
the event rather than pre-existing it; The mediating effects of
various contextual features are not given but generated in their
meeting with other actors in the event. This means that partic-

ular features may have multiple effects when they become part
of multiple events and sets of relations. Thus, the agency of
contexts is multiple. This has important implications for the
design of interventions seeking to modify such spaces, as it
requires that we remain sensitive to the multiple effects such
interventions generate. Reconciling this multiplicity in terms
of singular policy objectives concerning drug use (abstinence,
for example) is likely to remain a challenge for prevention and
harm reduction policy and practice. Nevertheless, in moving
beyond the singularity and stasis implied in context towards
the temporality, dynamism and multiplicity captured in
event we see a richer picture of what goes into shaping spe-
cific events of drug use.
Generating
events
An events analysis sees harm not as a property inhering in a
for harm
particular substance, person or environment; rather, the poten-
reduction
tial for harm arises in the unfolding relations of the event,
whereby numerous actors come together in a way that gener-
ates harmful transformations (see also Duff, 2014).
Approaching drug use and harm in this way presents opportu-
nities for considering how we might enable, foster, and rein-
force relations that may produce less harmful drug-use events,
or the positive production of alternatives to harm.
One possibility is to maintain our current focus on users

while recasting their agency. Rather than seeing humans as
sole agents independent of their relations, an event approach
provides a more nuanced account of how agency is enabled,
constrained, and mediated by the relations in which people are
embedded. Their abilities to create harm-free events are not
given, but collectively generated in the relations of the event.
Taking this approach does not nullify human agency; certainly
young people do have agency in their drug use and are active
participants in generating particular relations. These abilities,
however, are not independent of, but are rather enabled by, the
relations of the event. The account above demonstrates how
many agencies must be attuned in order to achieve a partic-
ular enjoyable and harm-free outcome, including managing

475
drug markets, police, the quality of MDMA, and engagements

with the immediate environment. People may have the power
to mediate their associations with various actors (such as snif-
fer dogs and festival entrance spaces), transform actors (such
as an MDMA capsules properties), or enroll other actors (such
as dental wax or trams), for example. Some of the formal and
informal strategies that people use to control their use and
reduce possible harms have been well documented (Duff,
Johnston, Moore, & Goren, 2007; Moore, 1993; Panagopoulos
& Ricciardelli, 2005). However, ones ability to act in harm-
reducing ways is mediated by the particular relations of the
event, and many elements remain outside the control of the
individual. Many agencies may intervene in ones ability to
achieve such an event. Think for example of the possibilities of
Michael being caught by the police, accidentally swallowing
his cap while entering the festival, or finding the cap did not
contain MDMA. The creation of safe events is not all up to the
agency of the individual user; harm-free, drug-use events must
be collectively produced. Targeting individuals alone may not
produce widespread change, and we may miss important
strategies by maintaining this focus (see also Moore & Dietze,
2005). The event approach shows that there is still much scope
for producing events of recreational drug use differently that
have not yet been explored given our focus on individuals or
structural factors.
As Gomart and Hennion (1999) have suggested, shifting our

focus from who acts to what occurs may illuminate how
various people, things, and processes let, make, or help events
to occur (p. 225). An events analysis may highlight numerous
alternative options for effecting change, by looking beyond
humans as the sole determinants of drug-taking action, and
beyond drugs as the sole determinants of drug effects. Such a
project would involve identifying the relations and processes
at work in the production of different kinds of events, rather
than identifying only actors (where we cannot assume that par-
ticular things will act in predictable ways when enrolled in dif-
ferent relations and events). By turning our attention to events

we are able to examine the agencies that may produce the con-
ditions in which, and thus enable the means through which,
various actors are able and willing to generate events consis-
tent with harm reduction. Transformations to events, however,
need not only be effected through people; they may also be
generated through mediating drugs, places, objects, and so on.
Questions for harm reduction then become: How might we
produce, reinforce or avoid interrupting the generation of less
harmful events of drug use; what agencies may be introduced
or stabilized in order to foster particular kinds of events; how
might we trigger new competencies, actions, effects and trans-
formations in drug use events; and how might we set up the
conditions in which things have a chance to act differently (see
also Gomart, 2002)? These questions raise opportunities for
acting in ways that are generative of alternatives to harm,
rather than simply attempting to limit action, remove actors, or
instruct them to act otherwise. While research addressing these
kinds of questions is taking place in the area of injecting drug
use (e.g., the modification of objects in Fraser, 2013; spaces in
Malins, Fitzgerald, & Threadgold, 2006; space-times in Fraser,
2006; object-spaces in Vitellone, 2010), it is far less common
with regard to young peoples recreational illicit drug use.
Examining different kinds of events may yet produce benefits
for exploring the ways in which young peoples drug use may
be tuned towards less harmful outcomes.
Note * The research was approved by the Monash University Human

Research Ethics Committee (Project number: CF12/2241
2012001196).
References Bourgois, P. (1995). In search of respect: Selling crack in El Barrio. New

York: Cambridge University Press.
Bhling, F. (this issue). Crowded contexts: On the affective dynamics of

alcohol and drug use in nightlife spaces. Contemporary Drug
Problems.

477
Briggs, D. (2013). Deviance and risk on holiday: An ethnography of British

tourists in Ibiza. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Callon, M. (1986). Some elements of a sociology of translation:
Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. In
J. Law (Ed.), Power, action and belief: A new sociology of knowl-
edge? (pp. 196-223). London: Routledge.
Demant, J., & Dilkes-Frayne, E. (in press). Situational crime prevention in
nightlife spaces: An ANT examination of PAD dogs and doorwork. In
D. Robert & M. Dufresne (Eds.), Actor-Network Theory, crime stud-
ies and technologies. Surrey: Ashgate.
Duff, C. (2007). Towards a theory of drug use contexts: Space, embodiment
and practice. Addiction Research & Theory, 15(5), 503-529.
Duff, C. (2008). The pleasure in context. International Journal of Drug
Policy, 19(5), 384-392.
Duff, C. (2012). Accounting for context: Exploring the role of objects and
spaces in the consumption of alcohol and other drugs. Social &
Cultural Geography, 13(2), 145-159.
Duff, C. (2013). The social life of drugs. International Journal of Drug
Policy, 24(3), 167-172.
Duff, C. (2014). The place and time of drugs. International Journal of Drug
Policy, 25(3), 633-639.
Duff, C., Johnston, J., Moore, D., & Goren, N. (2007). Dropping,
connecting, playing and partying: Exploring the social and cultural
contexts of ecstasy and related drug use in Victoria. Melbourne:
Department of Human Services, Premiers Drug Prevention Council.
Fitzgerald, J. I. (1998). An assemblage of desire, drugs and techno.
Angelaki, 3(2), 41-57.
Fitzgerald, J. L. (2009). Mapping the experience of drug dealing risk envi-
ronments: An ethnographic case study. International Journal of Drug
Policy, 20(3), 261-269.
Fraser, S. (2006). The chronotope of the queue: Methadone maintenance
treatment and the production of time, space and subjects.
International Journal of Drug Policy, 17(3), 192-202.
Fraser, S. (2013). The missing mass of morality: A new fitpack design for
hepatitis C prevention in sexual partnerships. International Journal of
Drug Policy, 24(3), 212-219.
Gomart, E. (2002). Towards generous constraint: Freedom and coercion in a
French addiction treatment. Sociology of Health & Illness, 24(5),
517-549.

Gomart, E., & Hennion, A. (1999). A sociology of attachment: Music ama-

teurs, drug addicts. In J. Law & J. Hassard (Eds.), Actor Network
Theory and After (pp. 220-247). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Jayne, M., valentine, G., & Holloway, S. L. (2008). The place of drink:
Geographical contributions to alcohol studies. Drugs: Education,
Prevention, and Policy, 15(3), 219-232.
Latham, A. (2004). Researching and writing everyday accounts of the city:
An introduction to the diary-photo diary-interview method. In C.
Knowles & P. Sweetman (Eds.), Picturing the social landscape:
Visual methods and the sociological imagination (pp. 117-131).
London: Routledge.
Latour, B. (1999). Pandoras hope: Essays on the reality of science studies.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-
network-theory. New York: Oxford University Press.
Law, J. (1994). Organizing modernity. Oxford: Blackwell.
Law, J. (2004). After method: Mess in social science research. London:
Routledge.
Maher, L. (1997). Sexed work: Gender, race, and resistance in a Brooklyn
drug market. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Malbon, B. (1999). Clubbing: Dancing, ecstasy and vitality. London:
Routledge.
Malins, P., Fitzgerald, J. L., & Threadgold, T. (2006). Spatial Folds: The
entwining of bodies, risks and city spaces for women injecting drug
users in Melbournes Central Business District. Gender, Place &
Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 13(5), 509-527.
Moore, D. (1993). Social controls, harm minimisation and interactive
outreach: The public health implications of an ethnography of drug
use. Australian Journal of Public Health, 17(1), 58-67.
Moore, D., & Dietze, P. (2005). Enabling environments and the reduction of
drug-related harm: Re-framing Australian policy and practice. Drug
and Alcohol Review, 24(3), 275-284.
Panagopoulos, I., & Ricciardelli, L. A. (2005). Harm reduction and decision
making among recreational ecstasy users. International Journal of
Drug Policy, 16(1), 54-64.
Race, K. (2013). Complex events: Drug problems and emergent causation.
Paper presented at the Contemporary Drug Problems conference,
Complexity: Researching alcohol and other drugs in a multiple world,
Aarhus University, Denmark.

479
Roche, A. M., Bywood, P. T., Freeman, T., Pidd, K., Borlagdan, J., &
Trifonoff, A. (2009). The social context of alcohol use in Australia.
Adelaide: National Centre for Education and Training on Addiction.
Rhodes, T. (2009). Risk environments and drug harms: A social science for
harm reduction approach. International Journal of Drug Policy,
20(3), 193-201.
Sayes, E. (2014). Actor-Network Theory and methodology: Just what does
it mean to say that nonhumans have agency? Social Studies of
Science, 44(1), 134-149.
Stengers, I. (2000). The invention of modern science. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Toy, M., & Rolfe, T. (2012, December, 2). Drugs mar the party for
Stereosonic revellers in Melbourne. Sunday Herald Sun. Retrieved
from http://www.news.com.au
Vitellone, N. (2010). Just another night in the shooting gallery? The syringe,
space and affect. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space,
28, 867-880.
Vitellone, N. (2011). The science of the syringe. Feminist Theory, 12(2),
201-207.
Zimmerman, D. H., & Wieder, D. L. (1977). The diary: Diary-interview
method. Urban Life, 5(4), 479-498.
Zinberg, N. E. (1984). Drug, set, and setting: The basis for controlled
intoxicant use. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Tracing The Event of Drug Use. Context and The Coproduction of A Night Out On MDMA (Ella Dilkes-Frayne, 2014)

Transféré par

Informations du document

Titre original

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Tracing The Event of Drug Use. Context and The Coproduction of A Night Out On MDMA (Ella Dilkes-Frayne, 2014)

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Contemporary Drug Problems 41/Fall 2014 445

Tracing the event of drug

In this article I propose that current research addressing the

AUTHORS NOTE: I am very grateful to Cameron Duff, Lenore Manderson,

Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

Current approaches to examining contexts of drug use tend to

From context to event

Context is often used in alcohol and other drug (AOD)

Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

of drug-use practices, experiences, effects, pleasures, risks,

There remains a need to bring together spatial, material and

In addition to social, spatial and material features of contexts,

Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

illicit drug use, however, rarely pays significant attention to

I propose that examining drug use events provides an empiri-

Drawing the event from ANT

The conception of event I propose below draws on the ANT

Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

Mediation does not, however, remove an actors agency. Latour

While the terms human and nonhuman are often used to

Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

Another important feature of this mediating relationship for

While the concept of mediation is useful for thinking through

Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

Latour (1999) characterizes events as occasions given to dif-

The notion of event also arises in the work of Emilie Gomart

Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

momentary consumption or a period of psychoactive drug

Drug use emerges as a relational effect rather than the result of

Generating an account of an event

The task of accounting for complex events, and the shifting

Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

project was designed to explore the role of licensed venues and

In producing accounts with research participants, I drew on

Although qualitative research methods are well developed for

Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

ed to write a short diary after a day or night out at a licensed

The account I present below highlights the range of actors and

Some readers who regard ANT as a means of focusing on non-

Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

by the focus on Michael in the account that follows. This leads

In producing accounts, the chronology, duration, and bound-

Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

An event of MDMA use

In the account that follows, Michael takes a capsule of MDMA

Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

A number of factors came into play to open up the possibility

Other factors were also important in enabling Michael to

Michaels involvement in past events mediated this event in a

Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

over the duration of the day, alcohol had rather mediocre

Michael did not always have convenient access to MDMA. On

This particular capsule contained approximately 210mg of

Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

Another important factor generating the possibility of MDMA

Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

week following. It was possible that the after-effects would

Hence, a large number of factors went into generating the pos-

Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

he would be required to carry the MDMA through the festival

Accordingly, Michael as an active mediator sought to both

Downloaded from cdx.sagepub.com at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 5, 2016

Here a particular grouping of actors expected to meet one