Suchergebnisse

In this case study, I describe my experiences of conducting research interviews with young people who used inhalants (also known as volatile substances or solvents). My intention in conducting the study was to give some measure of public voice to young people in debates around inhalant use policy responses. I knew that as the author of the study (which I submitted as my PhD thesis), I could only offer an interpretation of these experiences. Nonetheless, the study generated new and nuanced ways of understanding both the pleasures and perils of inhalant use to inform policy and intervention. I accessed participants through drug treatment and homelessness agencies, and they were generally acutely marginalized and disengaged from education and employment, often homeless and many with mental health, juvenile justice, or past child protection involvement. The study design was interpretive and collaborative, and I used follow-up interviews to check my findings with participants. Study methods evolved in response to barriers and opportunities that arose. I describe how in-depth semi-structured interviews can be adjusted when interviewing marginalized young people. For example, acknowledging differences between the researched and the researcher can make the exchange more comfortable than pretending they do not exist. This case study also highlights how attending to the emotions aroused in research interviews can provide useful insights into the meanings of social practices. I conclude that alongside the potential for harm, research involvement can offer benefits for individuals who receive little social acknowledgment that their experiences are important.

Friendship, sociologists suggest, is defined by institutionalized rules to a lesser degree than other important relationships. Hence it must be sustained through specific friendship-making practices. Social science literature tends to conceptualize friendship as enhancing the pleasures of alcohol use rather than as central to friendship production. This article examines alcohol as a technology in contemporary young adults' friendship-making. Interviews with 60 drinkers aged 18–24 years in Melbourne, Australia demonstrate that drinking builds intimacy, particularly when similar levels of intoxication are achieved. Fear in night-time entertainment precincts underlines trust in friends. To manage uncertainty about responsibilities involved in friendship, young adults negotiate how they will care for each other when they are drunk. Providing this care occasionally jeopardizes friendship, in different ways for women and men. Understanding the import of friendship-making in alcohol use helps explain the persistence of heavy drinking and suggest opportunities for harm reduction.

The exploratory study of meanings of volatile substance use (VSU) on which this article draws (involving 28 young people living in Melbourne, Victoria, Australa, aged from 13 to 24 years, each with experience of VSU, and 14 expert workers) was not designed to investigate any relationship between VSU and living in out-of-home care while subject to protective orders. However, when asked about their lives at the time they commenced or intensified VSU, 8 participants were adamant that living in out-of-home care was a significant factor. Two narratives reiterated by these young people are identified in the article: first that VSU is part of life in out-of-home care, and second that VSU ceases to be appropriate after leaving care. Young people who are living in out-of-home care report substantially higher levels of VSU than occur across the general population. This article shows how narrative accounts (even when expressed by small numbers of participants) provide insight into how VSU and other drug use may become embedded in particular institutional settings through assuming meanings and utility for users that are specific to these environments. While previous literature on the aetiology of VSU generally emphasises individual or familial risk factors, this article argues that out-of-home care may function, at least in some instances, as an institutional 'risk environment' for VSU and that this should be further explored through future research. Adjusting models of care may offer new strategies for responding to this form of drug use.

The purpose of this paper is to show how "realist synthesis" methodology (Pawson, 2002) was adapted to review a large sample of community based projects addressing alcohol and drug use problems. Our study drew on a highly varied sample of 127 projects receiving funding from a national non-government organisation in Australia between 2002 and 2008. Open and pattern coding led to the identification of 10 barrier and nine enabler mechanisms influencing project implementation across the sample. Eight case studies (four demonstrating successful implementation; four demonstrating less than successful implementation) were used for depth exploration of these mechanisms. High level theories were developed, from these findings, on implementation effectiveness in projects addressing alcohol and other drug use problems.

Young people's drinking represents a nexus between time, temporalities and social practices. While drinking and intoxication have previously been considered a way to achieve a youthful sense of 'time out', young people's drinking is declining in Australia and other high-income countries, suggesting alcohol's centrality in young people's leisure time has diminished. Drawing on interviews with light and non-drinker teenagers from Melbourne, Australia, we develop Adorno's concept of 'free time' to show how young people's time use practices – including how they incorporate alcohol into their lives – are more than ever shaped by social and economic pressures. We framed participants' discussion of time and its relationship to drinking as a) using free time 'productively', b) being opportunistic around busy schedules, and c) the importance of using time for restoration. These framings suggest fragmented and pressure-filled patterns of free time may challenge drinking as a 'time out' practice for young people.

Abstract
The social work profession is rightly criticised for past and present wrongdoing against Aboriginal Australians. Non-Aboriginal social workers have significant contact with Aboriginal peoples but despite their guidance, social workers can struggle to engage effectively. Whilst this work is complex, little is known about the challenges non-Aboriginal social workers encounter, and how they might be navigated better. To address this gap, this article explores accounts from seventeen non-Aboriginal social workers who were interviewed about their practice with Aboriginal peoples in Australia, with framing and interpretation informed by interviews with thirteen Aboriginal Australians. Data were analysed using two approaches: a microanalysis and The Listening Guide. Participants insisted that their challenges are insignificant compared to those of Aboriginal Australians. Findings illustrate the complex nature of this experience for non-Aboriginal social workers, that is both highly valued and has the potential to distress. Implementing ethical practice against a backdrop of Australia's history of invasion and colonisation and their on-going impacts such as the racist treatment of Aboriginal Australians can be difficult to navigate. Supervision is a recognised approach to managing challenges; however, we caution against adopting this strategy without recognising and addressing the contextual dimensions of these experiences.

Bingo is a distinct, enduring but understudied form of gambling. It provides comfort and pleasure to many of its players while also causing harm to some. While traditionally seen as low harm, it is being reshaped by technological and regulatory change. Despite this, there is no recent overview of the literature on bingo. This narrative review seeks to fill this gap by exploring the development of literature on bingo since the 1980s, first providing a chronological overview of writing on bingo and then a brief account of major themes in the literature. The literature reviewed was primarily identified through searches of academic databases using search terms such as betting, bingo, electronic and gambling. We find that bingo research makes a number of important contributions: it allows better understanding of groups of overlooked gamblers, corrects biases in gambling literature, highlights the importance of social and structural factors in understanding gambling and employs methodological approaches that are congruent with the people and practices being studied. Additionally, it provides new perspectives on gambling in terms of skill, affect, harm and control and offers a distinct viewpoint to analyse gambling and other phenomena.

Feminist researchers have argued for a focus on 'everyday gambling' and domestic spaces as sites of women's leisure. In this article, we analyse how culture, class and gender shape the consumer practices of migrant women from Pacific Islands countries (Cook Islands and Tonga) who play bingo in regional Australia. This intersectional approach examines the effects of bingo in the everyday lives of these women. We show how migrant women gamblers have a distinctive experience of 'lifestyle' that is located within a meaningful symbolic order that values both domestic responsibilities and community relations within extended families, even when distance from the homeland and economic precarity entail social and financial pressures. While much policy research focuses on gambling harms, including the impact of electronic gaming machines or online gambling, here we show how bingo is embedded in social relations that mitigate many of the ongoing financial problems and deeper existential anxieties for those in precarious economic circumstances.