Pilar Albertín

‘It is who knows you’. The positions of university students regarding intentional investment in social capital

This article presents an investigation based on in‐depth interviews with 33 university students and eight discussion groups, aimed at finding out which discourses and positions mobilize college students in terms of social networking practices. It analyses how they construct meanings and question or legitimize their own actions or those of others, and how they contribute to the creation of different moral orders with reference to the relational practices that occur at the university and professional levels. Based on information provided by the students, it was found that they used three positions in relation to networking practices, the socio‐affective, pragmatic and context‐contingent. Some of the implications of these positions for the development of university career and guidance programmes are also analysed.

Using drugs: The meaning of opiate substances and their consumption from the consumer perspective

This article reports on the ethnographical study carried out among an opiate consumer community in Barcelona (Spain) and analyses the meanings that those consumers build and handle around the substances that they consume. Our approach emphasises the point of view of the consumers in their understanding of drugs and the type of relationships that they maintain between themselves and with their social environment.

Vulnerability Effects in the Criminal Justice System on Women Who Suffer Physical Abuse in their Couple Relationships (Spain)

This article aims to explore the psychosocial practices in one of the sites that respond to vulnerable women who suffer abuse in their couple relationships: the criminal justice system. A discursive theoretical–methodological perspective is used (Foucault 1969; Ibáñez and Iñiguez 1997; Wetherell and Potter 1993), based on the discourse analysis and their positions that can be found in the practices of professionals in the criminal justice system (judges, prosecutors, lawyers, police), as well as in some of the narratives of vulnerable women. These accounts have been gathered through participant observations in courtrooms and police stations where complaints are filed, and through in-depth interviews. The results show the influence and the effects of: (a) an ‘empiricist position’ characterised by objectivity and emotional distance, and (b) a ‘professional position’ characterised by the predominance of professional roles and pragmatic experiences over reflexive practice. Nevertheless, emerging resistant practices include elements that could be placed in a ‘feminist position’ and provide new insights for the treatment of vulnerable women.

The social constructions of drug users in professional interventions

This qualitative study analyses the construction of a subject who uses drugs (injected drugs) so as to offer psychosocial proposals for social healthcare interventions within this collective, and thereby contribute to social healthcare policies that optimise treatment for drug use. The results indicate that identity is connected to positions that are activated in interactions and relationships between users and professionals in various day-to-day contexts of healthcare and treatment. We have labelled these activated positions: therapeutic, drug-sensory, consumerist, legal-repressive and group-community. Understanding them provides clues that may improve interventions in health and legal contexts. These clues include understanding the tensions between the subject and the substance, considering the stigmatised image and identity, and supporting the idea of the existence of dilemmas in users and professionals, as this may allow transformations to occur in the mutual relationships that are established.