Using Space: Critical Geographies of Drugs and Alcohol

The consumption of drugs and alcohol, and the pleasures and problems arising from this consumption, can be understood as embedded and constitutive elements of social, family, and recreational life. At the same time, they are key sites of intervention for a broad array of state and non-state actors focused on regulation, treatment, and recovery.

This edited volume showcases current research on the complex social and cultural geographies of drugs and alcohol. Taking an avowedly critical approach, the authors draw from a variety of theoretical traditions to explore the socially and spatially embedded nature of alcohol and drug consumption, regulation and treatment, and the ways in which these give rise to particular lived experiences, while foreclosing on others. Together, the chapters question taken-for-granted assumptions about the nature of, and motivations for, drug and alcohol use, and pay direct attention to both the intended and unintended consequences of regulation and treatment initiatives. Despite and, in part, because of this critical stance, chapters hold immediate implications for drug and alcohol policy and public health interventions.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Social and Cultural Geography.

1. Introduction: Critical geographies of drugs and alcohol

2. Drugs, sex, and the geographies of sexual health in Thailand, Southeast Asia
3. Young men’s violence and spaces of addiction: opening up the locker room
4. Accounting for context: exploring the role of objects and spaces in the consumption of alcohol and other drugs5. Recovery spaces and therapeutic jurisprudence: a case study of the family treatment drug courts
6. Supportive measures, enabling restraint: governing homeless ‘street drinkers’ in Hamilton, Canada

Christopher M. Moreno is an adjunct professor of social geography in the Department of Geography at San Diego State University, U.S.A.

Robert Wilton is a professor of social geography in the School of Geography and Earth Sciences at McMaster University, Canada.