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Bendigo
With a population of around 140,000, Bendigo
has a thriving young population and an active drug using population.
A needle and syringe program distributes around 4,500 syringes each
month to injecting drug users in and around the city. Over the past
three years there has been active community debate about injecting
drug use, with the main focus on heroin use, although there is wide
acceptance that methamphetamine (speed) has been very popular in
Bendigo for quite some time. A reliable train connection, and upgraded
highway makes travel to/from Melbourne possible in a little over
90 minutes. Reports suggest that regular movement of drugs into
Bendigo from Melbourne occurs on a daily basis with small groups
of drug users and large scale suppliers regularly purchasing heroin
and amphetamine from Melbourne.
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Methods Used in the Study
The study uses traditional urban ethnographic
methods, interview, observation and relationship building with small
networks of young (under 26) injecting drug users, their families
and friends in Bendigo.
Semi-structured interviews of 30-90 minutes duration
have been conducted in Bendigo with drug users, their friends and
families in a series of interconnected social networks. In the ethnographic
tradition, extensive time has been spent in drug user's homes and
places where drugs were being used.
Most of the observation and interviews were conducted
in the homes of drug users who also occasionally deal in small quantities
of drugs. By spending time with people, we are able to create a
picture of young drugs users that is more complex and can allow
us to understand their drug use in the context of their broader
life experiences.
Recruitment of study participants is primarily
through social network sampling. As this research involves a comparative
focus between urban and regional experience, fieldwork is conducted
in Bendigo as well as in Melbourne.
Interviews are digitally recorded, sections
transcribed, and subsequent theme analysis conducted using a coding
scheme developed in the course of data collection. The software
package Annotape® is used for data management.
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Analysis of Research Materials
We are interested in the interweaving stories
that shape the social relationships between young new injecting
drug users and those involved in the social network that shape the
experience of becoming an injecting drug user. A key feature of
this ethnographic description is that the story focuses on the relationships
between Self, Body and Other. In this sense, the description is
not just a story about heroin use, rather, it explicitly focuses
on the relationships that provide continuity, (i.e. reproduce the
social and cultural world), instrumental effects (produce functional
outcomes or solve other problems) and produce fragmentation (associated
with disconnection from social identities). Fragmentation in this
sense can be both a positive or negative breaking with the past.
Currently the research team is writing
up several papers from the fieldwork conducted during the first
12 months of the project.
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