Managing moral category implications of former drug addiction

Abstract

This project examines how meanings of drug addiction are negotiated through analysis of situated social actions in a telephone conversation. This paper uses interactional analysis to show how a former heroin user’s identity is constructed and moralized in the process of providing accounts through descriptions of drug addiction and its consequences. This case shows how social actions in interpersonal conversation provide insights into judgment and addiction, and how participants manage the complex moral hierarchies associated with drug use and drug user identities. The analysis contributes to enriching an area of empirical research that needs more data and more attention to interaction, while also contributing to theories of categorization, normalization, stigma, and morality of drug addiction.