Outline

Overview

Pleasure is often thought to make everyday life worthwhile, but it is also commonly positioned as the antithesis of health. In this unit we explore how key strands of cultural studies have approached this paradox with reference to specific examples: drug use, sex, consumption, leisure activities are possibilities. By considering how authorities have attempted to govern these practices, and with what effects, students will develop new associations between conceptual innovation, cultural intervention and policy impacts.

Unit details and rules

Unit code	GCST4205
Academic unit	Gender and Cultural Studies
Credit points	6
Prohibitions ?	None
Prerequisites ?	None
Corequisites ?	None
Assumed knowledge ?	None
Available to study abroad and exchange students	No

Teaching staff

Coordinator	Kane Race, kane.race@sydney.edu.au

Type	Description	Weight	Due	Length
Participation	Participation Participate in class discussion informed by required readings	10%	Ongoing	1000wd equiv
Outcomes assessed:
Assignment	Essay Essay selected from set questions	60%	STUVAC	3000wd
Outcomes assessed:
Assignment	Case study Essay or case study from set questions	30%	Week 06	2000wd
Outcomes assessed:

Assessment summary

Participate in class discussion informed by required readings
Write an essay or case study based on selected set questions
Write an essay based on selected set questions

Assessment criteria

Result name	Mark range	Description
High distinction	85 - 100	HD (85-90): Work that is outstanding for a second year student and shows potential for distinguished performance at higher levels. Written work demonstrates initiative and ingenuity in research, pointed and critical analysis of material, and innovative interpretation of ethnographic evidence. It offers an insightful contribution to anthropological debate, engages with values, assumptions and contested meanings contained within ethnographic evidence, and develops sophisticated, theoretically inflected arguments on the strength of anthropological research and interpretation. It shows a high degree of professionalism in presentation, and the writing is characterised by creativity, style and precision. HD+ (90-100): Work whose quality exceeds normal expectations for outstanding work at second year. Written work more than meets the criteria for a High Distinction, displaying a marked degree of originality and/or scholarly professionalism. Depending on the task assigned, the exceptional qualities might include suggestion of a new perspective from which to view a problem, identification of a problem not adequately recognised in the standard literature, methodological and/or conceptual innovation, or a particularly creative approach to writing.
Distinction	75 - 84	DISTINCTION (75-84%): Work that shows proficiency in the discipline of Anthropology. Written work reflects successful initiative in research and reading as well as complex understanding and original analysis of subject matter, with attentiveness to both the cultural and the scholarly context. It engages perceptively with ethnographic material and takes a critical, interrogative stance in relation to anthropological argument and interpretation. It has near-flawless referencing and evidence to support arguments, and, especially at the higher levels, the writing is characterised by style, clarity and some creativity.
Credit	65 - 74	CREDIT (65-74%): Low Credit (65-69): Promising work suggesting potential for further development. Written work contains evidence of broad reading, offers synthesis and some critical evaluation of secondary material, argues a position in relation to one or more existing scholarly approaches and/or shows some sophistication in its use of primary material. The introduction clearly states the approach being taken and/or the position being argued. The essay is characterised by good selection of evidence, logical argument and grasp of relevant ethnographic material. It shows some evidence of independent thought and an extra spark of insight. High Credit (70-74): Work of significant promise. Written work provides evidence of extensive reading and initiative in research, sound grasp of subject matter and appreciation of key issues and context. It engages critically with the question and attempts an analytical evaluation of primary and/or secondary material as required for the task assigned. It makes a good attempt to critique various scholarly approaches and offers thoughtful comment on the issues in an existing anthropological debate. It shows some evidence of ability to think theoretically as well as contextualise material culturally, and to conceptualise and problematise issues in anthropological terms. Work awarded a high credit is generally well written and always well referenced and supported with appropriate evidence; it often contains evidence of original interpretation or creative thought.
Pass	50 - 64	PASS (50-64%) Low Pass (50-54): Work of a barely acceptable standard. Written work contains evidence of minimal reading and some understanding of subject matter. It typically features summary and paraphrase of relevant material with little interpretation or analysis. It reflects a reasonable attempt to organise material logically and comprehensibly and to provide scholarly documentation. There may be gaps in any or all of these areas. Medium Pass (55-59): Work of a satisfactory standard. Written work meets basic requirements in terms of reading and research. It demonstrates a reasonable understanding of subject matter, offers a synthesis of relevant material and shows a genuine effort to avoid paraphrasing, to offer interpretation and to provide acceptable referencing and evidence. It has a comprehensible structure organised around an identifiable theme. There may be weaknesses in particular areas. High Pass (60-64): Meritorious work containing some elements that are of credit standard. Written work contains evidence of a broad and reasonably accurate command of the subject matter and some sense of its broader significance. It identifies the principal issues and some key scholarly approaches to them, and shows some awareness of the nature and pitfalls of ethnographic evidence. It goes beyond synthesis to propose an argument, although there may be weaknesses of clarity, structure or use of evidence in the case as presented. Properly documented, it shows signs of one or more of the following: attention to expression and fluency; independent thought; and critical response to existing interpretations of ethnographic material.
Fail	0 - 49	FAIL (Below 50%) Work not of an acceptable standard. Work may fail for any or all of the following reasons: lack of sufficient research using appropriate sources; irrelevance of content; failure to answer the specific question or treat the specified theme; wholesale lack of analysis or interpretation; unacceptable levels of paraphrasing; significant deficiencies in presentation, grammar or structure; incomprehensible expression; very late submission without an extension.

For more information see guide to grades.

Late submission

In accordance with University policy, these penalties apply when written work is submitted after 11:59pm on the due date:

Deduction of 5% of the maximum mark for each calendar day after the due date.
After ten calendar days late, a mark of zero will be awarded.

Academic integrity

The Current Student website provides information on academic integrity and the resources available to all students. The University expects students and staff to act ethically and honestly and will treat all allegations of academic integrity breaches seriously.

We use similarity detection software to detect potential instances of plagiarism or other forms of academic integrity breach. If such matches indicate evidence of plagiarism or other forms of academic integrity breaches, your teacher is required to report your work for further investigation.

You may only use artificial intelligence and writing assistance tools in assessment tasks if you are permitted to by your unit coordinator, and if you do use them, you must also acknowledge this in your work, either in a footnote or an acknowledgement section.

Studiosity is permitted for postgraduate units unless otherwise indicated by the unit coordinator. The use of this service must be acknowledged in your submission.

Learning support

Simple extensions

If you encounter a problem submitting your work on time, you may be able to apply for an extension of five calendar days through a simple extension.  The application process will be different depending on the type of assessment and extensions cannot be granted for some assessment types like exams.

Special consideration

If exceptional circumstances mean you can’t complete an assessment, you need consideration for a longer period of time, or if you have essential commitments which impact your performance in an assessment, you may be eligible for special consideration or special arrangements.

Special consideration applications will not be affected by a simple extension application.

Using AI responsibly

Co-created with students, AI in Education includes lots of helpful examples of how students use generative AI tools to support their learning. It explains how generative AI works, the different tools available and how to use them responsibly and productively.

Weekly schedule

WK	Topic	Learning activity
Week 01	Politics of drugs	Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)
Week 01	Social Approaches	Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)
Week 03	Cultural Impasses	Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)
Week 04	Bodies and Pleasures	Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)
Week 05	Drug Assemblages	Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)
Week 06	Touching base - individual meetings	Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)
Week 07	Governing Drug Users	Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)
Week 08	Conceiving Harm Reduction	Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)
Week 09	Doing Harm Reduction	Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)
Week 10	Touching base - individual meetings	Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)
Week 11	Chemsex	Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)
Week 11	Present challenges	Lecture and tutorial (2 hr)

Study commitment

Typically, there is a minimum expectation of 1.5-2 hours of student effort per week per credit point for units of study offered over a full semester. For a 6 credit point unit, this equates to roughly 120-150 hours of student effort in total.

Required readings

Reading Requirements

Week 1: Politics of Drugs

Race, K. (2009) ‘Recreational States’. In Pleasure Consuming Medicine: The queer politics of drugs. Duke UP. (Chapter 4).

Further Reading:

Sedgwick, Eve K. (1993) “Epidemics of the Will”. In Tendencies. Durham: Duke University Press.

Race, K & Brown, R. (2016) Cultural Studies Approaches to Drugs and Alcohol. In Kolind, T., Thom, B., & Hunt, G. (eds.) The Sage Handbook of Drug and Alcohol Studies Volume 1.

Crawford, R. (2006). Health as a meaningful social practice. Health:, 10(4), 401-420.

Week 2: Social Approaches: beyond deviance

Becker, Howard (1963). In Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. Free Press.

Pearson, G. & Twohig, J. [1975] Ethnography through the looking glass. In Hall, S. and Jefferson, T. (eds) Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. 2nd edn. London and New York: Routledge.

Further Reading:

Heather Love. 2015. Doing Being Deviant: Deviance Studies, Description, and the Queer Ordinary. differences 26, 1: 74-95

MacAndrew, C., & Edgerton, R. B. (1969). “Some people can really hold their liquor”. Drunken comportment: A social explanation. Boston, MA: Walter De Gruyter. Chapter 2.

Young, Jock (1972) The Drugtakers: The Social Meaning of Drug Use. Paladin. (Chapter 2)

Week 3: Cultural Impasses

Willis, P. [1975] The cultural meaning of drug use. In Hall, S. and Jefferson, T. (eds) Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. 2nd edn. London and New York: Routledge.

Hebdige, D. [1975] The meaning of Mod. In Hall, S. and Jefferson, T. (eds) Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. 2nd edn. London and New York: Routledge.

Further Reading:

S. Hall and T. Jefferson (1993) Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. 2nd edn. London and New York: Routledge., 1993. … especially Introduction and Chapters 1, 13 and 17.

Hall, Stuart (1981) ‘Notes on deconstructing “the popular”’, in Samuel, R. (ed) People’s History and Socialist Theory, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. pp. 227-39.

Week 4: Bodies and Pleasures

McWhorter, Ladelle (1999) ‘Self-overcoming through ascetic pleasures’. In McWhorter, Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization. Indiana UP.

Pini, Maria (1997) ‘Women and the early British rave scene’, in McRobbie, A. (ed) Back to Reality? Social Experience and Cultural Studies. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. pp 152-169.

Further Reading:

Jackson, P. (2004) Inside Clubbing: Sensual Experiments in the Art of Being Human. Oxford and New York: Berg. Introduction (pp.1-7), Chapters 8 and 9 (pp. 115-154)

Sedgwick, Eve K. (1993) “Epidemics of the Will”. In Tendencies. Durham: Duke University Press.

Helen Keane (2002). What's wrong with addiction? Melbourne, Australia: Melbourne University Publishing.

Week 5: Drug Assemblages

Malins, Peta (2004) ‘Machinic assemblages: Deleuze, Guattari and an ethico-aesthetics of drug use’, Janus Head, 7(1):84-104.

Further reading:

Gomart, E., & Hennion, A. (1999). A sociology of attachment: music amateurs, drug users. The Sociological Review, 47(1_suppl), 220-247.

Deleuze, G. “Ethology: Spinoza & Us” In Crary & Kwinter (eds.) (1992) Incorporations. Zone Books

Duff, C. (2014). Assemblages of drugs, spaces and bodies. In Assemblages of Health (pp. 125-151). Springer, Dordrecht.

Week 6: Touching Base – Individual Meetings

Introduction to Dennis, F. (2019). Injecting Bodies in More-than-Human Worlds: mediating Drug-Body-World Relations. Routledge.

Week 7: Governing Drug Users

Moore, D., & Fraser, S. (2006). Putting at risk what we know: Reflecting on the drug-using subject in harm reduction and its political implications. Social Science & Medicine, 62(12), 3035-3047.

Further reading:

Keane, H. (2003). Critiques of harm reduction, morality and the promise of human rights. International Journal of Drug Policy, 14(3), 227-232.

Miller, P. G. (2001). A critical review of the harm minimization ideology in Australia. Critical Public Health, 11(2), 167-178.

Fischer, B., Turnbull, S., Poland, B., & Haydon, E. (2004). Drug use, risk and urban order: examining supervised injection sites (SISs) as ‘governmentality’. International Journal of Drug Policy, 15(5-6), 357-365

Week 8: Conceiving Harm Reduction

Race, K. (2008). The use of pleasure in harm reduction: Perspectives from the History of Sexuality. International Journal of Drug Policy, 19(5), 417-423

Malins, P. (2017). Desiring assemblages: A case for desire over pleasure in critical drug studies. International Journal of Drug Policy, 49, 126-132

Further reading:

Duff, C. (2014). Assemblages of drugs, spaces and bodies. In Assemblages of Health (pp. 125-151). Springer, Dordrecht.

Dennis, F., & Farrugia, A. (2017). Materialising drugged pleasures: practice, politics, care. International Journal of Drug Policy, 49, 86-91

Fraser, S. (2020). Doing ontopolitically-oriented research: Synthesising concepts from the ontological turn for alcohol and other drug research and other social sciences. International Journal of Drug Policy, 102610

Week 9: Doing Harm Reduction

Malins, P. (2019). Drug dog affects: Accounting for the broad social, emotional and health impacts of general drug detection dog operations in Australia. International Journal of Drug Policy, 67, 63-71.

Gonçalves, D. M., Kolstee, J., Ryan, D., & Race, K. (2016). Harm reduction in process: The ACON Rovers, GHB, and the art of paying attention. Contemporary Drug Problems, 43(4), 314-330

Further Reading:

Dennis, F., Rhodes, T., & Harris, M. (2020). More-than-harm reduction: Engaging with alternative ontologies of ‘movement’ in UK drug services. International Journal of Drug Policy, 102771

Duncan, T., Duff, C., Sebar, B., & Lee, J. (2017). ‘Enjoying the kick’: Locating pleasure within the drug consumption room. International Journal of Drug Policy, 49, 92-101.

Week 10: Touching Base – Individual Meetings

Race, K & Brown, R. (2016) Cultural Studies Approaches to Drugs and Alcohol. In Kolind, T., Thom, B., & Hunt, G. (eds.) The Sage Handbook of Drug and Alcohol Studies Volume 1.

Week 11: Chemsex

Hakim, J. (2019). The rise of chemsex: Queering collective intimacy in neoliberal London. Cultural Studies, 33(2), 249-275

Further reading:

Preciado, P. (2013). Testo junkie: Sex, drugs, and biopolitics in the pharmacopornographic era. The Feminist Press at CUNY

Race, K. (2015). ‘Party and Play’: Online hook-up devices and the emergence of PNP practices among gay men. Sexualities, 18(3), 253-275

Week 12: Present challenges

Weil, B. (2020). The ‘good’ coronavirus citizen, the ‘covidiot’ and the privilege of #stayathome. Discover Society (blog) April 1, 2020

Preciado, P. (2020) Learning from the virus. Artforum International, 58(9), 74-84.

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes are what students know, understand and are able to do on completion of a unit of study. They are aligned with the University's graduate qualities and are assessed as part of the curriculum.

Outcomes
Graduate qualities

At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:

LO1. Demonstrate an understanding of key critical and cultural approaches to embodiment, health and consumption
LO2. Demonstrate understanding of how key traditions in cultural studies grasp questions of bodies and bodily nature
LO3. Develop capacities to conduct conceptually innovative, empirically engaged research
LO4. Develop critical capacities to analyse governmental practices in relation to practices of consumption and everyday life

Graduate qualities

The graduate qualities are the qualities and skills that all University of Sydney graduates must demonstrate on successful completion of an award course. As a future Sydney graduate, the set of qualities have been designed to equip you for the contemporary world.

GQ1	Depth of disciplinary expertise Deep disciplinary expertise is the ability to integrate and rigorously apply knowledge, understanding and skills of a recognised discipline defined by scholarly activity, as well as familiarity with evolving practice of the discipline.
GQ2	Critical thinking and problem solving Critical thinking and problem solving are the questioning of ideas, evidence and assumptions in order to propose and evaluate hypotheses or alternative arguments before formulating a conclusion or a solution to an identified problem.
GQ3	Oral and written communication Effective communication, in both oral and written form, is the clear exchange of meaning in a manner that is appropriate to audience and context.
GQ4	Information and digital literacy Information and digital literacy is the ability to locate, interpret, evaluate, manage, adapt, integrate, create and convey information using appropriate resources, tools and strategies.
GQ5	Inventiveness Generating novel ideas and solutions.
GQ6	Cultural competence Cultural Competence is the ability to actively, ethically, respectfully, and successfully engage across and between cultures. In the Australian context, this includes and celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, knowledge systems, and a mature understanding of contemporary issues.
GQ7	Interdisciplinary effectiveness Interdisciplinary effectiveness is the integration and synthesis of multiple viewpoints and practices, working effectively across disciplinary boundaries.
GQ8	Integrated professional, ethical, and personal identity An integrated professional, ethical and personal identity is understanding the interaction between one’s personal and professional selves in an ethical context.
GQ9	Influence Engaging others in a process, idea or vision.

Outcome map

Learning outcomes	Graduate qualities
Learning outcomes

Responding to student feedback

This section outlines changes made to this unit following staff and student reviews.

This unit has been reorganised since last offered to fit the non-classroom context, with reduced readings and extra individual consultation time built in to the unit schedule

Disclaimer

The University reserves the right to amend units of study or no longer offer certain units, including where there are low enrolment numbers.

To help you understand common terms that we use at the University, we offer an online glossary.

Current students

Overview

Overview

Unit details and rules

Teaching staff

Assessment

Assessment

Assessment summary

Assessment criteria

Late submission

Academic integrity

Learning support

Learning support

Simple extensions

Special consideration

Using AI responsibly

Weekly schedule

Weekly schedule

Study commitment

Required readings

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes

Graduate qualities

Outcome map

Responding to student feedback

Responding to student feedback

Disclaimer

On this page

Useful links

Media

Student links

About us

Connect

Current students

GCST4205: Health, Pleasure and Consumption

Semester 2, 2020 [Normal day] - Camperdown/Darlington, Sydney

Overview

Overview

Unit details and rules

Teaching staff

Assessment

Assessment

Assessment summary

Assessment criteria

Late submission

Academic integrity

Learning support

Learning support

Simple extensions

Special consideration

Using AI responsibly

Weekly schedule

Weekly schedule

Study commitment

Required readings

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes

Graduate qualities

Outcome map

Responding to student feedback

Responding to student feedback

Disclaimer

On this page

Useful links

Media

Student links

About us

Connect