ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the articulation of alcohol and other drug consumption and partying practices in Australian drug education documents and in in-depth qualitative interviews with young men (aged 16–19). While much research relies on a taken for granted notion of ‘effectiveness’ to assess the quality of drug education, I offer an analysis attuned to the ethical and political implications of the ways these initiatives articulate relationships between young people and alcohol and other drugs. Working with concepts drawn from Science and Technology Studies (STS), primarily Annemarie Mol’s ‘ontological politics’ and Bruno Latour’s notion of ‘sensitivities’, I approach a corpus of education texts and qualitative interview data not as representative of a stable reality but forces that work to constitute specific, and always political, realities. This approach suggests that all practices, such as drug education practices, work to enact realities, and operate to make some forces present and others absent. I argue this STS approach looks beyond a primary focus on effectiveness to analyse the potential for drug education to participate in an unethical and harmful ontological politics of youth parties and drug consumption. From here, I argue that using this approach in an analysis of interview data effectively allows for an analysis that maps an enactment of parties that includes realities and sensitivities that could inform drug education interventions aimed at reducing harm. I will conclude by reflecting on how the notion of ontological politics and an STS analysis more generally can inform approaches to educating young people about partying and alcohol and other drug consumption specifically.