Contemporary Authors

Enriched with ethnographic vignettes from the author's ten years of fieldwork in Australia, Smokefree is a challenging, important book which demands to be read and discussed by anyone with an interest in anthropology, sociology, political science, human geography, and public health.
Table of contents

Orienting Notes: Ethnographic Vignettes from a Fascinating Atmosphere

Introduction: There's Something in the Air

Part I
1. The Difference Between Tobacco and Tomatoes
2. Oppositionary Pairings and Ruinous Smoke
3. Re-imagining the Smoker

Part II
4. Breathing in Smoke(free), Firsthand
5. Miasmatic Exhalation: Breathing Out (Secondhand) Smoke
6. Abject Third-hand Smoke
7. Fourth-hand Smoke: Going to Flavour Country

Conclusion

References
Index
Reviews

“A breath of fresh air? Dennis problematizes – and thereby brings forward for our contemplation – the stuff of life normally forgotten. The very atmosphere of the everyday is examined through smoke's transgressive waft. The (non-)substance of our biosphere, and hence our assumptions about health and wellness, are revealed via a dazzling and humorous collage of anthropology, practical philosophy and advertising. If there be smoking wars then Dennis provides the gun.” – Rod Lucas, University of Adelaide, Australia,

“Smokefree is a clever exploration of concepts of materiality, embodiment and sensory experience, and boundary crossing, as well as a challenge to apply our methods thoroughly and neutrally even on behaviors of which we disapprove.” – Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database

“Anthropologist Dennis challenges the pervasive anti-smoking agenda of most of anthropology and social science research. Even research that appears to look at smoking from the (recalcitrant) smoker's point of view in reality is often doing so in service of more finely tailored anti-smoking messages. Dennis uncovers the complexity of smoking in, for example, how smokers experience the trail of smoke as it emanates from their lit cigarettes. Some people tell Dennis that they smoke because of smoking's now demonized state. Dennis discovers that anti-smoking messages, such as pregnant women smokers giving birth to low weight babies, can be seen as an advantage to women who would like to give birth to small babies. People told Dennis how they mentally countered the graphic public health messages found throughout Australia. Many of Dennis's findings come from casual conversations with smokers in Australia as they were smoking. Some of the time Dennis was herself smoking, which probably announced to the smoker that Dennis was without judgments. The book's illustrations and ethnographic content from smokers is effective. Its many discussions of anthropological and philosophical theories make this book best suited to graduate students and scholars. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.” – CHOICE

Smokefree
A Social, Moral and Political Atmosphere
By: Simone Dennis
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Published: 02-25-2016
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Edition: 1st
Extent: 216
ISBN: 9781472569226
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
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About Smokefree

Although tobacco is a legal substance, many governments around the world have introduced legislation to restrict smoking and access to tobacco products. Smokefree critically examines these changes, from the increasing numbers of places being designated as 'smokefree' to changes in cigarette packaging and the portrayal of smoking in popular culture.

Unlike existing texts, this book neither advances a public health agenda nor condemns the erosion of individual rights. Instead, Simone Dennis takes a classical anthropological approach to present the first agenda-free, full-length study of smoking. Observing and analysing smoking practices and environments, she investigates how the social, moral, political and legal atmosphere of 'smokefree' came into being and examines the ideas about smoke, air, the senses, space, and time which underlie it. Looking at the impact on public space and individuals, she reveals broader findings about the relationship between the state, agents, and what is seen to constitute 'the public'.

Enriched with ethnographic vignettes from the author's ten years of fieldwork in Australia, Smokefree is a challenging, important book which demands to be read and discussed by anyone with an interest in anthropology, sociology, political science, human geography, and public health.
Table of contents

Orienting Notes: Ethnographic Vignettes from a Fascinating Atmosphere

Introduction: There's Something in the Air

Part I
1. The Difference Between Tobacco and Tomatoes
2. Oppositionary Pairings and Ruinous Smoke
3. Re-imagining the Smoker

Part II
4. Breathing in Smoke(free), Firsthand
5. Miasmatic Exhalation: Breathing Out (Secondhand) Smoke
6. Abject Third-hand Smoke
7. Fourth-hand Smoke: Going to Flavour Country

Conclusion

References
Index
Reviews

“A breath of fresh air? Dennis problematizes – and thereby brings forward for our contemplation – the stuff of life normally forgotten. The very atmosphere of the everyday is examined through smoke's transgressive waft. The (non-)substance of our biosphere, and hence our assumptions about health and wellness, are revealed via a dazzling and humorous collage of anthropology, practical philosophy and advertising. If there be smoking wars then Dennis provides the gun.” – Rod Lucas, University of Adelaide, Australia,

“Smokefree is a clever exploration of concepts of materiality, embodiment and sensory experience, and boundary crossing, as well as a challenge to apply our methods thoroughly and neutrally even on behaviors of which we disapprove.” – Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database

“Anthropologist Dennis challenges the pervasive anti-smoking agenda of most of anthropology and social science research. Even research that appears to look at smoking from the (recalcitrant) smoker's point of view in reality is often doing so in service of more finely tailored anti-smoking messages. Dennis uncovers the complexity of smoking in, for example, how smokers experience the trail of smoke as it emanates from their lit cigarettes. Some people tell Dennis that they smoke because of smoking's now demonized state. Dennis discovers that anti-smoking messages, such as pregnant women smokers giving birth to low weight babies, can be seen as an advantage to women who would like to give birth to small babies. People told Dennis how they mentally countered the graphic public health messages found throughout Australia. Many of Dennis's findings come from casual conversations with smokers in Australia as they were smoking. Some of the time Dennis was herself smoking, which probably announced to the smoker that Dennis was without judgments. The book's illustrations and ethnographic content from smokers is effective. Its many discussions of anthropological and philosophical theories make this book best suited to graduate students and scholars. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.” – CHOICE

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-02/smokers-have-developed-a-resilience-to-anti-smoking-policies/7472864

Smokers develop resilience to anti-cigarette policies and ads, study says
By Tom Lowrey

Updated 3 Jun 2016, 3:18am
Plain packaging
Photo: The research found smokers will swap packets to avoid health messages that make them feel uncomfortable. (AAP: Department of Health and Ageing)
Map: Australian National University 0200

New research into the habits of smokers has found many are unaffected by anti-smoking policies like plain packaging, and in some cases are actually encouraged to smoke.

Associate Professor Simone Dennis from the Australian National University (ANU) spent a decade studying the changing experience of the modern-day smoker, and the effects of plain packaging, graphic warnings and increased tobacco prices.

Her research found not only that many smokers were not only smoking despite health warnings, but that some would seek out cigarettes because of them.

Ms Dennis said she encountered young pregnant women who were encouraged, not deterred, by some of the warnings.

"They were absolutely terrified of giving birth to a large baby, that was their primary fear," Ms Dennis said.

"So they would seek out packets that had the message smoking could make a baby smaller, and deliberately smoke in order to accomplish that aim.

"[It's] very obviously not how the messaging is intended to work."

Smokers have avoidance strategies

Nicotine is an extremely addictive product, it's much more addictive than heroin, cocaine or some other products which aren't legal.
Dr Alan Shroot, Canberra Action on Smoking and Health

Ms Dennis said many smokers would exchange packets or move their cigarettes into other non-labelled containers to avoid having to see certain health warnings.

"I met lots of people who had blue eyes who would insist they return their packet [with a blue eye held open on the front] and get a different packet," she said.

"Blokes ... were very comfortable with ones relating to pregnancy so they felt that didn't effect them. There were lots of strategies."

Ms Dennis also said there was a misconception that if smokers' were given information on the health dangers, they would quit.

She said for many that approach would not drive them to stop smoking.

"Figure out why they're smoking, what it means to them, what it does for them, all of that sort of stuff," Ms Dennis said.

"And then involve people in crafting strategies."

Research understates influence of nicotine: doctors

Some medical professionals argue many smokers are not choosing to smoke, they are simply battling nicotine dependency.

Dr Alan Shroot from Canberra Action on Smoking and Health said the addictive power of nicotine cannot be downplayed.

"Nicotine is an extremely addictive product, it's much more addictive than heroin, cocaine, or some other products which aren't legal," he said.

"It controls [smokers], and I feel sorry for them - that it has such a control over them."

Dr Shroot said there were some smokers who would not quit - and attention was best focused on preventing future generations from taking it up.

"My philosophy is the money is much better spent at the other end, on prevention and educating children not to start," he said.

"You get much better bang for your buck by educating children about the effects of smoking."

Hate mail about research received

Money is much better spent at the other end, on prevention and educating children not to start.
Dr Alan Shroot Canberra Action on Smoking and Health

Ms Dennis said she was criticised for not taking a strong anti-smoking stance in her book.

"It's difficult to kind of acknowledge that smokers want to smoke in the first place," she said.

"Most of the book has pepperings of hate mail in it from all sorts of public health people who have objected to the fact that I haven't taken up a cessation agenda in the book.

"I would get lots and lots of hate mail from people saying 'you've got blood on your hands, this is mischievous research, you should be looking at strategies to help people to quit'.

"It was quite an interesting experience."

=====

For the Love of Lab Rats: Kinship, Humanimal Relations, and Good Scientific Research - Student Edition Kindle Edition

Product details

File Size: 569 KB
Print Length: 259 pages
Publisher: Cambria Press (August 20, 2017)
Publication Date: August 20, 2017

Kindle Edition: Note: this is a shortened version of the original, hardcover work. References have been removed.

Hardcover edition:

Hardcover: 222 pages
Publisher: Cambria Press (July 28, 2011)

The movement of research animals across the divides that have separated scientist investigators and research animals as Baconian dominators and research equipment respectively might well give us cause to reflect about what we think we know about scientists and animals and how they relate to and with one another within the scientific coordinates of the modern research laboratory. Scientists are often assumed to inhabit the ontotheological domain that the union of science and technology has produced; to master 'nature' through its ontological transformation. Instrumental reason is here understood to produce a split between animal and human being, becoming inextricably intertwined with human self-preservation. But science itself is beginning to take us back to nature; science itself is located in the thick of posthuman biopolitics and is concerned with making more than claims about human being, and is seeking to arrive at understandings of being as such. It is no longer relevant to assume that instrumental reason continues to hold a death grip on science, nor that it is immune from the concerns in which it is deeply embedded. And, it is no longer possible to assume that animal human relationships in the lab continue along the fault line of the Great Divide. <>, which has always maintained a sure grip on kinship but has not yet accounted for how it might be validly claimed to exist between humanimals <>. It raises equally important questions about the position of science at the forefront of new kinships between humans and animals, and questions our assumptions about how scientific knowing is produced and reflected upon from within the thick of lab work, and what counts as 'good science'. Much of it is concerned with the quality of humanimal relatedness and relationship. For the Love of Lab Rats will be of great interest to scientists, laboratory workers, anthropologists, animal studies scholars, posthumanists, phenomenologists, and <>.

From Cambria Press:
http://www.cambriapress.com/cambriapress.cfm?template=6&bid=215

Christmas Island
Introduction
Being on Christmas Island
A Place in Movements
Animal movement
Into liminal terrain
Arriving by boat into (un)Australia
Being local on Christmas Island
Leaving Home
A Moving disciplinary orientation

Chapter 1: An ethnographic introduction to Christmas Island, Indian Ocean, Australia.
Finding Christmas Island
Island Places
Some notes on sensual movement

Chapter 2: The more than human world of Christmas
Chromatic Variance
Gold
Blue
Red
Walking, listening and remembering with animals
Animals in Analysis
Animals, movement and metaphor
Animals and claims to place
Food, animals and borders

Chapter 3: Staying and Moving in Local Places
How to make a neighbourhood
Making locals on Christmas Island
The sensual past in the present body
Labour and reliably local locals
Running on local status: government elections
Future labour, future movement

Chapter 4: Moving Between Places
Of Borders
National angst, national borders
The safe interior: constructing islandic borders
Island metaphors and dangers from over the water
Internal borders
Sensual divisions
Crossing the internal divide: pan islandic crabs

Chapter 5: Leaving Christmas Island
Away
Lost
Seeking same
Almost found
Leaving it all behind

Chapter 6: Conclusion

Description

Christmas Island is a small territory of Australia located in the Indian Ocean. It is home to three main ethnic groups, the smallest of which are European Australians. Christmas Island is also where those who arrive “illegally” to seek asylum in Australia are accommodated. Christmas Island has played a key role in Australian security, located as it is at the northern extremity of Australian territory; much closer to Indonesia than to the nation to which it belongs, and from whose territory it has recently been excised for migration purposes.

As a migration exclusion zone, Christmas is both within and without of the nation, and has gone from a place known among nature lovers for its unique red crabs and bird life to the highly politicised subject of national concern and heated debate. But what is it like to be at home on Christmas Island? How do locals make and come to be at home in a place both within and without of the nation?

This anthropological exploration––the very first one ever undertaken of this strategically important island––focuses closely on the sensual engagements people have with place, shows how Christmas Islanders make recourse to the animals, birds and topographic features of the island to create uniquely islandic ways of being at home––and ways of creating “others” who will never belong––under volatile political circumstances.

This original ethnography reveals a complex island society, whose presence at the very edge of the nation reveals important information about a place and a group of people new to ethnographic study. In and through these people and their relationships with their unique island place, this ethnographic exploration reveals a nation caught in the grip of intensive national angst about its borders, its sense of safety, its struggles with multiculturalism, and its identity in a world of unprecedented migratory movement.

As the first book in the discipline of anthropology to study Christmas Island in ethnographic terms, Christmas Island is a critical work for all collections in anthropology and Australian Studies.

Reviews

"Recommended." - CHOICE

"Intriguing and informative ... with an extensive list of references ... Dennis's writing is elegant, thought-provoking, and, above all, never less than accessible." - Popular Culture Review

“Christmas Island is described by Simone Dennis as ‘the last outpost of the nation’, that is, a multicultural microcosm of contemporary Australia, worried by a search for a national identity in touch with the past but not limited by it...In Simone Dennis, Christmas Island has its consummate ethnographer and analyst.” – Professor Nigel Rapport, University of St. Andrews

About Simone Dennis

Simone Dennis is Lecturer in Anthropology at the Australian National University. Prior to this appointment, she was Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Southern Queensland. She holds a PhD from the University of Adelaide, a B.A. in Modern Asian Studies from Griffith University, and a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Tasmania.

Dr. Dennis is also an advisory editor for Popular Culture Review Journal in the United States.