Contested Cultural Spaces: Exploring Illicit Drug-using Through Trainspotting

Abstract

Contending that culture is one of the most potentially divisive signifiers of human activity, this paper probes some of the complexities that attend the (un)popular culture of illicit drug-using with which many young people in contemporary Britain are identified. Irvine Welsh’s multi-media drugs narrative Trainspotting is drawn on to explore the politics embedded in Edinburgh’s low- and high-cultural spaces and interrogate how lived culture is spatially constituted and expressed. Investigations focus on the micromappings of Scotland’s drug-using ‘Other’ which disorder official cartographies of the capital and illustrate the processes of marginalisation. The final part of the discussion argues that the academy’s recent cultural turn can inform school geography by contributing to a cultural pedagogy which recognises that informal sites of learning can be used with young people to examine the multiple dimensions and dynamics of in/exclusion.

Keywords:

• cultural geography
• cultural pedagogy
• Edinburgh
• illicit drug-using
• space
• Trainspotting