Parkin, S. Habitus and Drug Using Environments: Health, Place and Lived-Experience. Farnham: Ashgate. 2013.

Stephen Parkin's new book, Habitus and Drug Using Environments, furnishes a unique perspective on injecting drug use in the UK. He is concerned with such spaces as ‘public toilets, parking lots, derelict buildings, secluded stairwells, rooftops and doorways’, which are almost always, he contends, ‘hidden in open view’ (p. 1). Now a research fellow in the School of Health and Human Sciences at Huddersfield University, Parkin has contributed to public policy and the field of sociology as a member of the academy and a private consultant for over a decade. In this monograph he blends Bourdieusian theory with extensive qualitative research on injecting drug use to produce a work that challenges and adds to the conception of ‘health-place nexus’ (p. 1) The result is a dense and penetrating book that not only helps to re-conceptualise the drug user as an actor, but also problematises the interaction of drugs, drug-using environments and legal frameworks.