Masculinities and Intoxication: Notes Towards a Co-constitutive Approach

This chapter explores some of the theoretical resources available for approaching masculinities and intoxication as co-constituted. Following a review of social constructionist accounts of masculinities and intoxication, the chapter considers recent scholarly work on gender and drugs that goes beyond ‘drug, set and setting’, ‘drunken comportment’ and ‘hegemonic masculinity’, and beyond recent calls for greater engagement with ‘intersectionality’. Influenced by feminist science studies and science and technology studies, this work attempts to acknowledge materiality in the production of drug realities without treating it as determining, and to analyse masculinities and drug effects, including intoxication, as emerging from, and contingent on, the collective activity of diverse human and non-human elements.