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Commentary
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Article history:
Received 2 June 2015
Received in revised form 8 September 2015
Accepted 14 October 2015
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 briey 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.
2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Assemblage
Deleuze
Affective geographies
Context
Drugs
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2015.10.003
0955-3959/ 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Duff, C. Assemblages, territories, contexts. International Journal of Drug Policy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.drugpo.2015.10.003
G Model
Please cite this article in press as: Duff, C. Assemblages, territories, contexts. International Journal of Drug Policy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.drugpo.2015.10.003
G Model
Please cite this article in press as: Duff, C. Assemblages, territories, contexts. International Journal of Drug Policy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.drugpo.2015.10.003
G Model
Please cite this article in press as: Duff, C. Assemblages, territories, contexts. International Journal of Drug Policy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.drugpo.2015.10.003
G Model
of their essential, agentic properties. Outside of these congurations, individual entities may exhibit different causal properties,
perhaps even none at all. Kane Race (2014:304306) has recently
applied the notion of emergent causality to explore the role of
sniffer dogs in police operations in Sydney. Despite claims that
the use of sniffer dogs has led to reductions in drug related crime in
Sydney, Race examines spatial and temporal congurations
(assemblages) in which the presence of dogs has had no impact
on drug use, and others in which the impact was contrary to the
intended outcome, further complicating causal explanations of the
role of sniffer dogs in local policing.
This suggests once again that causality is not a necessary
outcome of a given entitys agentic properties, rather it is established
in encounters between entities whereby the direction of causality
may differ from one assemblage to another, just as it may differ from
one encounter to another. Races (2014:320322) analysis indicates
how the presence of sniffer dogs in a given assemblage instantiates
one set of causal relations transforming drug use practices, while in
another assemblage (in another space, in another time) it exhibits no
signicant causal effects at all. The point is that casualty cannot be
determined on the basis of a priori assumptions about the behaviour
of a given set of entities but must be conrmed in real experience as
casual relations emerge in encounters between bodies (human and
nonhuman), objects and practices. Of course, this is simply one more
way of saying that assemblage thinking furnishes a novel unit of
empirical analysis for contemporary drug studies. It may also open
up new ways of interrogating the social aspects of drug use, and their
manifestations in particular places (or contexts). The goal, in each
respect, is to uncover the bodies, objects and spaces that participate
in drug use events so that each entity may be given its due in
assessments of how drug use may be made safer, less harmful. This is
the assemblage thinking that may yield a novel harm reduction
praxis. Yet, it may also offer a way out of interminable debates
regarding the relative onus of agents and structures, individuals and
contexts, in the production of drug problems. From the perspective
of the assemblage it simply makes no sense to speak of an
individuals drug problem given how many other forces will be
active in the articulation of this problem, including peers, family
members, outreach workers, drug objects and paraphernalia,
money, gifts and so on. However, it is equally nonsensical to assert
that power, context or structure are the real causes of drug
problems, given the capacities that assemblages avail to individual
bodies. Hence, it is not a question of imagining some meso level of
social interaction in which agents and structures interact in the
travails of practice (see DeLanda, 2006). As Deleuze (1994) would
have it, the only way between agents and structures is by way of the
assemblage; and the only way between debates about individuals
and power in the production of drug problems is by way of the
assemblage too. Assemblages experience drug problems not (just)
individuals or social contexts. A harm reduction praxis of and for the
assemblage awaits its proper articulation in policy as in practice.
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-Chancellors Senior
Research Fellowship at RMIT University.
Conict of interest statement: The author declares that there are no
conicts of interest.
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