Lisa Williams provides the latest contribution to Dick Hobbs's and Geoffrey Pearson's edited collection Advances in Ethnography, which aims to “highlight the best, most innovative ethnographic work available”. Williams's book offers an interesting and valuable account of recreational drug taking amongst young adults in their 20s in North West England. She has interviewed 19 participants (seven current drug takers, seven drug desisters and seven drug abstainers) from the original 1991 North West England Longitudinal Study which examined how young people spent their leisure time. Participants were 14 in 1991 and were surveyed annually until they were 18 in 1995. Further surveys were undertaken when they were 22 in 1999 and 27 in 2004. Williams's sample is drawn from those who were surveyed in 2004 at age 27 and her data also draws on interviews that the same participants gave when they were 17 and 22.
Longitudinal research of this nature is still relatively rare in the field of drugs, particularly in the UK: it can be difficult to make the long-term investment required, whether in terms of research time or ongoing funding, and such methods are often overlooked by those seeking to commission research in fields like drugs where evidence can be urgently required to support political standpoints. This is disappointing given the inherent value in understanding drug using careers in their cultural and generational context. Here, Williams uses the longitudinal research methodology to good effect delivering a fascinating and in-depth insight into the complexities of decisions about drug taking in young adulthood.
The traditional narrative around drug use and age/life transitions has been that as drug users grow older, meet intimate partners, forge careers, move away from home and embark on parenthood, so their use of drugs declines. The narrative that Williams presents, however, provides a richer and more complex picture. For example, two of her interviewees were new parents in 1999, announced their rejection of their former drug-taking lifestyles and their intention to remain drug free, yet, by 2004, as their children were a bit older and their roles as mothers sat a little more comfortably, they had both returned to some form of recreational drug use. As Williams aptly points out, if the data collection had stopped in 1999 the story would have been seemingly simple: as drug users grow up and take on adult responsibilities, so their drug use curtails. The subsequent data collection allows us to observe that decisions about drug taking can be fluid and must be viewed in a cultural and structural context: it reminds us that the story can be a lot more complicated and life journeys must provide the context against which drug-taking decisions are made.
The heart of the book is comprised of a quartet of chapters of interview data from the three time periods. The first pair offer little that is particularly groundbreaking, detailing the perceived costs and benefits of drug use in general (Chapter 3) and the specific pleasures experienced by their takers (Chapter 4). The data really comes alive, as outlined above, in the second pairing of chapters that deal with the journey to adulthood (Chapter 5) and a set of case studies of individuals explaining their decisions about whether to take drugs or not at different points in their lives (Chapter 6).
This data are analysed by drawing on Beck and Giddens's social theory of risk, Douglas's cultural risk theory and Laub and Sampson's life course criminology perspective. Ultimately, Williams equates drug taking with risk assessment and, under the umbrella of this theoretical framework, presents a convincing argument that decisions to take drugs and not to take them can be explained “as a product of agency bound within cultural and structural circumstances”. The final chapter (Chapter 7) is particularly thoughtful, seeking to link the lessons that can be learnt from the study of adult recreational drug users to policy making. The message here is that the lived experience of adult recreational drug users as competent risk managers with control over their drug journeys is ignored by policymakers and politicians. Instead of acknowledging the existence of the high-functioning, recreational adult drug user and seeking to learn from them, they tend to categorise drug users as either young and experimental or older and troubled.
Those looking for an innovative and in-depth ethnography, as might be suggested from such a prestigious series as this, may well be disappointed. As outlined above, Williams has created a very welcome longitudinal narrative of drug taking, which deserves celebration in its own right as an underused and innovative methodology. Her in-depth interviews and access to previous interviews do not, however, constitute an ethnography which would entail some immersion in either the drug-taking experiences of her specific participants or some commentary on observations of the more general drug-taking scene of the times. The inclusion of Williams's book in this series signals either a lack of strong new ethnography emerging at the current time or a waning in commitment to the ethnographic methodology from the editors, either of which would be a lamentable outcome.
In sum, while some of the data goes over old ground and the discussion is not particularly up to date in terms of topical drug issues (the emergence of new psychoactive substances, the decrease in number of people reporting cannabis use) – perhaps because the last point of data collection were in 2004 – this book makes a significant contribution to the literature in terms of detailing the complexities of transitions into adulthood and their impact on drug-taking decisions, while at the same time effectively critiquing policy making options for failing to appropriately consider the adult recreational drug user. It will hold wide appeal for its engaging style based around the life stories of respondents as well as its clear theoretical framing and is a thoroughly enjoyable read.
