Paul Draus

CRACKING THE CORNFIELDS: Recruiting Illicit Stimulant Drug Users in Rural Ohio

This article describes the process of recruiting research subjects for a natural history study of illicit stimulant use in rural Ohio using respondent-driven sampling and ethnographic methods. Participant observation, qualitative interviews, and focus groups were used to establish the project and to evaluate and modify the sampling process as it unfolded. We outline the steps taken in several different rural counties, using ethnographic data to illustrate local differences and obstacles that were faced. The article concludes that respondent-driven sampling is a promising method for identifying and recruiting members of hidden populations in rural areas. However, adequate time must be allotted to establish ethnographic footholds and to reach various networks in separate communities.

Needles in the haystacks: the social context of initiation to heroin injection in rural Ohio.

Although there has been much research on the social context of heroin injection, little has been reported outside of major urban areas. This article examines contextual factors associated with initiation to heroin injection in rural Ohio, based on semistructured qualitative interviews and focus groups involving 25 recent heroin injectors (12 women, 13 men) recruited from three contiguous counties between June 2002 and February 2004. Curiosity about the drugs effects, the growing pressures of drug dependence and economic need, and the influence of intimate and group relations were all identified as factors that offset fears commonly associated with injection. This study complements other research on the social ecology of heroin injection and may contribute to improved services for injection drug users in rural areas and small communities.

‘We don’t have no neighbourhood’: Advanced marginality and urban agriculture in Detroit

This paper is based on qualitative interviews (n=20) conducted with individuals working or residing within a heavily depopulated section of the city of Detroit. This area is the projected site of an urban agriculture (UA) project, which proposes to utilise vacant land and economically marginalised residents to produce marketable products and services. With a few exceptions, neighbourhood respondents had little hope of improvement occurring in the neighbourhood anytime soon, and few expectations for UA to alter the daily life or social dynamic of the area. These findings are framed and interpreted using Wacquant’s (1999) concept of advanced marginality and Sampson’s (2012) arguments concerning neighbourhood effects. While some neighbourhood improvement efforts were viewed positively, others were regarded with intense suspicion, indicating that idealistic UA efforts may have some work to do in terms of engaging residents and offsetting legacies of displacement as well as on-going marginalisation.

A hell of a life: addiction and marginality in post-industrial Detroit

Drawing on concepts from Foucault and Agamben, we maintain that the lives of daily heroin users provide a prime illustration of bare life in the zone of indistinction that is contemporary Detroit. First, we consider the case of Detroit as a stigmatized and racially segregated city, with concrete consequences for its residents. We then present evidence from in-depth ethnographic and economic interviews to illustrate the various spaces of confinement—that of addiction, that of economic marginality, and that of gender—occupied by these men and women, as well as the indeterminacy of their daily lives, captured through their descriptions of daily routines and interactions. We examine their expressions of worth as expressed in economic, emotional and moral terms. Finally, we draw connections between the sustained marginality of these individuals, as a contemporary category of homo sacer, and the policies and powers that both despise and depend upon them. Heroin, we contend, helps to fill and numb this social void, making bare life bearable, but also cementing ones marginality into semi-permanence.

SUBSTANCE ABUSE AND SLOW-MOTION DISASTERS: The Case of Detroit

In this article, I focus on problem substance use as one outcome of an underlying, “slow-motion disaster” caused by the long-term collision between corrosive structural processes, counterproductive social policies, and vulnerable populations. Using the city of Detroit as an illustration, I offer an original conceptual model for linking the causes and cascading consequences of slow-motion disasters. This model highlights the embedded connections between structural factors, such as racial segregation and systemic unemployment, and multiple destructive outcomes, including health and crime disparities, as well as problem substance use. Finally, I conclude that sociological researchers must engage with broader publics and diverse coalitions if they are to contribute to an alternative social policy—a holistic, regional “disaster response”—that takes multiple layers of causality into account, and addresses the core of vulnerabilities that make such disasters possible.

The Game Turns on You Crack, Sex, Gender, and Power in Small-Town Ohio

Exchanges of sex for crack cocaine have received much attention from public health researchers and ethnographers of substance abuse. These exchanges are often viewed as one-dimensional relationships in which men use their access to crack cocaine and womens dependence on the drug to exploit them sexually. Drawing on in-depth interview data gathered during three years of research conducted in central Ohio, this article examines the relationship between sexual behavior and crack cocaine use from both male and female perspectives. Bourdieus concept of fields is then applied to illuminate the relational dimensions of gender, sex, and power within this local crack-cocaine using scene, while also illustrating the domination inherent in most scenarios involving crack-for-sex exchange. Implications for possible interventions based on this analysis are also discussed.

“I Always Kept a Job”: Income Generation, Heroin Use and Economic Uncertainty in 21st Century Detroit

This qualitative study, based on a series of 30 in-depth interviews and 109 economic surveys conducted with active heroin users residing in and around Detroit, Michigan, describes reported patterns of heroin use and income generation activities. In spite of lack of access to regular, legal employment, we found that many participants displayed a dedication to regular daily routine and a sense of risk management or control. These findings are discussed relative to past research on heroin addiction as well as recent research on the changing nature of employment. We argue that this sample fits somewhere in between the controlled or working addict, and the “junkie” or “righteous dope fiend” of urban lore. We draw a connection between these stable patterns of addiction and income generation and the demands of informal and insecure labor markets. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for further research, interventions, and public policy.

Streets, strolls and spots: Sex work, drug use and social space in detroit

BACKGROUND In this paper, we explore social spaces related to street sex work and illicit drug use in Detroit. We consider these spaces as assemblages (Duff, 2011, 2013; Latour, 2005) that reflect the larger moral geography (Hubbard, 2012) of the city and fulfill specific functions in the daily lives of drug using sex workers. METHODS We draw on thirty-one in-depth qualitative interviews with former street sex workers who were recruited through a court-based treatment and recovery program, as well as ethnographic field notes from drug treatment and law enforcement settings. RESULTS Our interview findings reveal highly organized and routine activities that exist in a relatively stable, symbiotic relationship with law enforcement practices, employment and commuter patterns, and built environments. While the daily life of street sex work involves a good deal of individual agency in terms of moving between spaces and negotiating terms of exchange, daily trajectories were also circumscribed by economics, illicit substance use, and the objective risks of the street and the police. CONCLUSION We consider the implications of these results for future policy directed at harm reduction in the street setting.

Making Sense of the Transition From the Detroit Streets to Drug Treatment

In this article we consider the process of adjustment from active street sex work to life in structured substance abuse treatment among Detroit-area women who participated in a semicoercive program administered through a drug court. We examine this transition in terms of changes in daily routines and social networks, drawing on extensive qualitative data to illuminate the ways in which women defined their own situations. Using concepts from Bourdieu and Latour as analytical aids, we analyze the role of daily routines, environments, and networks in producing the shifts in identity that those who embraced the goals of recovery demonstrated. We conclude with a discussion of how the restrictive environments and redundant situations experienced by women in treatment could be paradoxically embraced as a means to achieve expanded opportunity and enhanced individual responsibility because women effectively reassembled their social networks and identities to align with the goals of recovery.

Heroin mismatch in the motor city: addiction, segregation, and the geography of opportunity

In this article, the authors used data from economic and ethnographic interviews with heroin users from Detroit, Michigan, as well as other sources, to illustrate the relationship between heroin users’ mobility patterns and urban and suburban environments, especially in terms of drug acquisition and the geography of opportunity. The authors found that although geographic location and social networks associated with segregation provided central city residents and African Americans with a strategic advantage over White suburbanites in locating and purchasing heroin easily and efficiently, this same segregation effectively focuses the negative externalities of heroin markets in central city neighborhoods. Finally, the authors consider how the heroin trade reflects and reproduces the segregated post-industrial landscape and discuss directions for future research about the relationship between ethnic and economic ghettos and regional drug markets.