I just want to be normal
An analysis of discourses of normality among recovering heroin users
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7787776 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sarah Nettleton (0000-0002-5184-2764, University of York), Joanne Neale (0000-0003-1502-5983, Oxford Brookes University), Lucy Pickering (0009-0007-2025-2124, University of Glasgow) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 174-190 |
| Publication date | 2013-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Health An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health Illness and Medicine (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1363-4593 • E-ISSN: 1461-7196 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1363459312451182 |
| PMID | 22763795 |
| OpenAlex | W2169710803 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 38 |
| References cited | 38 |
Research that has explored the lives of men and women recovering from heroin addiction has reported that users often claim that they ‘just want to be normal’. Working within a Foucauldian tradition, we argue in this article that the notions of ‘governmentality’ and the ‘norm’ are especially apposite to understanding the ubiquity of this aspiration. Here we focus not on the formal institutions of governance that encourage individuals to adhere to social, cultural and political norms, but rather seek to explore recovering users’ accounts of normality as they are envisaged and expressed. The reported empirical data were generated from interviews with 40 men and women in England at various stages of recovery from heroin use. The analytic focus is upon the accounts of normality articulated during the interviews in order to identify the ways in which being normal is presented by the participants. In keeping with the methodological tradition of discourse analysis we identify six discursive repertoires of ‘normality talk’ that transcend the accounts. It is concluded that the negotiation of normality is a precarious route for this social group. Articulations of a desire to be normal are replete with tensions; there are expressions of both resistance and resignation. Despite claims by some contemporary social theorists that diversity is the ‘new normality’, the accepted bounds of ‘difference’ are limited for those who have been addicted to heroin
Epistemology · Governmentality · Negotiation · Normality · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Gender Studies · HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk · Law · Opioid Use Disorder Treatment · Psychology · Social Psychology · Substance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes
Sveikstančių priklausomų asmenų socialinis įsitraukimas
Normative identity construction among women diagnosed with a gambling disorder
The science of recovery capital
Language preferences and impact of labels on the lived experience of people who use heroin
The hunt for a job
“Recovery is about change, so you have to change everything”
Changing governmentalities of neighborhood governance in China
Describing recovery from drugs and alcohol
Narratives of normality
Managing moral category implications of former drug addiction
The becoming of methadone in Kenya
Destruction, fascination and illness
De l’envers à l’endroit
We’re supposed to be a family here”
Navigating the poverty of heroin addiction treatment and recovery opportunity in Kenya
Trauma in the childhood stories of people who have injected drugs
The improvable self
Evading and embracing normality
The becoming-methadone-body
Compelled loneliness and necessitated social isolation
"Why Am I the Way I Am?" Narrative Work in the Context of Stigmatized Identities
“I Was Raised in Addiction”
Narcofeminism
Connections built and broken
Tethered to this ball and chain”
Recovery as a minor practice
Is non-medical use normal? Normalisation, medicalisation and pharmaceutical consumption
Gender sameness and difference in recovery from heroin dependence
Practising recovery
Managing expense and expectation in a treatment revolution
Disturbing sleep and sleepfulness during recovery from substance dependence in residential rehabilitation settings
Narratives of Change
Recovering a Fecal Habitus
Precarious Lives, Precarious Treatments
Governing drug use otherwise
Institutional resistance to veganism
Mapping the Drugged Body
To Be Free and Normal
Interpreting qualitative data
Pathways from heroin addiction
The normal and the pathological
Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis
Discipline and Punish
The Subject and Power
Is it time for the sociology of health to abandon ‘risk’
Ideology and Consciousness
Drug Users in Society
In Search of Respect
Spoiled identity’ in hepatitis C infection
Drug use, risk and urban order
Revisioning women and drug use
Inventing Ourselves
I Don't Have Another Run Left With It
Discipline and Punish
Risk environments and drug harms
Beyond class and nation
Dazzled by unity? Order and chaos in public discourse on illicit drug use
Drug users' sexual relationships and the social organisation of risk
Are drug treatment services only for 'thieving junkie scumbags'? Drug users and the management of stigmatised identities
Putting at risk what we know
Norms, Discipline, and the Law
Health as a meaningful social practice
Normality and Pathology in a Biomedical Age
In Good Company
Pleasure, Freedom and Drugs
"The Normal American Family" as an Interpretive Structure of Family Life Among Grown Children of Korean and Vietnamese Immigrants
Entangled identities and psychotropic substance use
Pleasure, power and dangerous substances
Disciplining Addictions
On the Normal and the Pathological
| Unique citing works | 38 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,92 |
| Citation span | 2013 - 2024 (12) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 36 |