QMJC 2020 – Party and Play’: Online hook-up devices and the emergence of PNP practices among gay men february

Team: Adrian Farrugia, Duane Duncan, Gemma Nourse and Nyssa Ferguson (Australian Research Centre in Intercourse, health insurance and community, Los Angeles Trobe University)

Kane Race’s (2015) article ‘“Party and play”: on the web hook-up products plus the emergence of PNP methods among gay males’ is an analysis that is generative of mediated sexual encounters including medication usage, or Party ‘n’ Enjoy (PNP) practices. This article traces the arrangement that is complex of, items and surroundings, together understood as ‘infrastructures’, that form these encounters together with types of sociality that emerge therein. Although the article has an expansive analysis of the infrastructures, we concentrate mainly on Race’s study of the part of medication consumption, generally speaking crystal methamphetamine and GHB (gamma hydroxybutyrate), in these techniques additionally the implications associated with analysis for health training.

The content comes from an’ that is‘insider-ethnography of changing contexts of HIV prevention in Sydney, Australia.

The wider research carries a dataset consists of findings, qualitative interviews and analysis of textual and material that is historical. In this piece, nevertheless, Race mainly works together information produced by their own participation within the culture that is sociosexual research. A lot of Race’s argument is dependent on an analysis of screenshots of discussion between him and potential intimate lovers on hook-up phone apps such as for instance Grindr and Scruff. The data offer a rich and, indeed, pleasurable encounter with the subject matter of the article while the dataset may be unfamiliar to researchers more used to traditional social science methods commonly encountered in alcohol and other drug journals.

PNP practices or ‘ChemSex’ have actually attracted considerable concern in general general public wellness research and popular tradition (see, including the 2015 Vice documentary Chemsex). As Race contends, within these sites PNP is positioned being a site that is pathogenic which dangers connected with medication usage and HIV transmission coalesce. Whilst not doubting the potential risks that may emerge, Race shows that a focus that is singular them ignores just just how PNP can also be a niche site by which crucial social bonds, logics of care and community connection can emerge (256). In focussing in the kinds of pleasure, play, community and care that emerge through PNP, Race concerns theories that are pathologising records of ‘unsafe intercourse’ or medication consumption between males who possess intercourse with males. Rather, he takes seriously the types of sociality that emerge through PNP because of the goal of ‘equipping individuals with additional mindful methods of navigating them’ (269).

The intake of illicit drugs such as crystal methamphetamine and GHB during PNP activities or ‘extended sessions’ is a vital explanation these are generally placed being a health concern that is public. Race supplies an analysis that is nuanced of usage over these activities, emphasising that they’re utilized to grow and create brand brand new bodily capacities that donate to the emergence of unique types of sociality and experimentation. For instance, in discussing methamphetamine that is crystal Race implies:

The drug … delays ejaculation, often indefinitely, which implies that ‘getting down’ isn’t always the privileged goal of the intimate encounter. Instead, what’s respected may be the ability to keep consider various intimate opportunities and tasks, in addition to power that is staying endurance necessary to maintain these erotic engagements.

Race presents a complex image of the types of experimentation or play produced in PNP.

while he argues, extended sessions may be recognized as being an enactment that is specific of ethic of experimentality established through PNP (268). While usually focussed on pleasure and play, Race is careful to acknowledge that pleasure and desired medication impacts are not guaranteed in full, instead they’ve been experiments that may go array. For instance, individuals may digest crystal methamphetamine but struggle to create a fulfilling intimate encounter leading to loneliness and frustration as opposed to playful connection that is social. Drug effects then, are grasped to be co-constituted by the infrastructures that produce PNP – technologies, things and surroundings that must definitely be correctly taken into account in every tries to research or elsewhere engage this intimate sociability and associated drug consumption.

The content convincingly shows that PNP is best comprehended as a ‘form of play and intimate conjecture in which guys test out physical opportunities to make more expansive experiences of pleasure and masculinity’ (269). The focus on the part of technologies, things and environments throws up a challenge for wellness educators and damage decrease more generally speaking.

How exactly does wellness advertising build relationships a practice that is thoroughly emergent by a complex selection of forces?

For Race, wellness training needs to establish mode of engagement that delivers individuals with an increase of capacity that is agential navigate the infrastructures that produce PNP. For Race,

This might indicate a various kind of health education than that which addresses it self into the sovereign, intentional, rational-choice star, since agency is recognized here, not quite as a matter of specific sovereignty over circumstances, but as something which emerges from provisional relations and accessories. (269)

This can be a type of wellness training by which individuals become sensitised towards the emergent capacities of this forces, including drugs, getting back together these infrastructures. Notably, this will be an approach that does maybe not position that is pre-emptively wellness methods such as for instance PNP nearly as good or bad but instead acknowledges and works together the pleasures and dangers that emerge from their store.

This can be a good example of conceptually and research that is methodologically novel crucial implications for scientists, wellness educators and damage decrease more generally speaking. Race effortlessly contends that by going to into the infrastructures creating https://foreignbride.net/guatemalan-women/ – and forms of sociality growing from – PNP, our company is better in a position to develop effective and ethical reactions to them.