Drug research: ethnographies or qualitative works

It is an honor and a challenge to be asked to write a commentary on the role of ethnography in the drug field in response to the International Journal of Drug Policy’s special issue on ‘ethnography and multidisciplinarity’ (volume 13.4), in which the authors all are distinguished experts. In my commentary, I will rely on the papers submitted by the contributors as well as my own experiences as a female drug ethnographer. As the papers in this volume reveal, although ethnographers have made major contributions to drug research, ethnography’s scientific value continues to be contested (Jackson, 1998). Among drug researchers, ethnography has a longstanding tradition. Examples from the United States include The Road to H. (Chein, Gerard, Lee & Rosenfeld, 1964); Portraits from a Shooting Gallery (Fiddle, 1967); Ripping and Running: A Formal Ethnography of Urban Heroin Addicts (Agar, 1973) Careers in Dope (Waldorf, 1973); Women on Heroin (Rosenbaum, 1981); Wheeling and Dealing: An Ethnography of an Upper Level Drug Dealing and Smuggling Community (Adler, 1985); Pathways from Heroin Addiction: Recovery without Treatment (Biernacki, 1986); The Cocaine Kids (Williams, 1989); Shooting Dope: Career Patterns of Hard-Core Heroin Users (Faupel, 1991); In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (Bourgois, 1995); Sexed Work: Gender, Race and Resistance in a Brooklyn Drug Market (Maher, 1997); and Fast Lives: Women Who Use Crack Cocaine (Sterk, 1999). A more in-depth discussion of these and other drug ethnographies would be fascinating but the space is too limited. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to note that among the works listed above one finds some ‘true ethnographies’ (for example, the work by Adler, Agar, Bourgois and Williams), while others are more accurately labeled as ‘qualitative research’. In addition, one might conclude that ethnographies often are written in book format in order to capture the richness of the information and prepared by a sole author. At the same time, the publication of books and single-authored works among drug researchers in general as well as among ethnographers increasingly are being replaced by the practice of publishing articles with multiple authors. Ethnography is a process as well as a product. In their investigations, ethnographers and other (qualitative) scholars have relied on theoretical approaches such as social constructionism (Berger & Luckman, 1967), ethnomethodology, phenomenology (Schutz, 1970), and symbolic interactionism (Blumer, 1969; Hewitt, 1997). Some the key features of ethnography include its emphasis on people and their behaviours in the larger context, including macro-level structural factors, the meanings people attach to their actions, and the ways in which social processes emerge and change (Hammersley, 1992). For instance, in the special issue Bourgois (2002) and Maher (2002) each address the enormous impact of structural conditions on the lives of drug users. All contributors aim to capture the emic or insider’s perspective and do this by ‘telling the story’ and representing the culture, Agar (1994) made the important point that ‘culture is not something people have; it is something that fills the space between them’. In their representations, ethnographers face the challenge of having to take me ‘interpretive turn’ (Hiley, Bohman & Schusterman, 1991). The most appropriate way to do so is a current topic of debate that extends beyond the scope of this commentary. I would like to point out, however, that while representing the voices of drug users can serve as a means to advocate for them, there is also the danger of reinforcing negative stereotypes. When studying vulnerable people, the interpretive turn can have more far-reaching consequences than, for example, when the ethnographer is studying up, referring to studying people who have status, power, and control (Nader, 1972). Despite the extensive contributions of ethnographies and the incredible insights they provide, scepticism E-mail address: csterk@sph.emory.edu (C.E. Sterk). International Journal of Drug Policy 14 (2003) 127 /130