E-cigarettes are handheld electronic devices that vaporise a flavoured liquid, which the users inhale (WHO 2014): Counselling For Addictions Assignment, SUSS, Singapore, Singapore

Introduction
E-cigarettes are handheld electronic devices that vaporise a flavoured liquid, which the users inhale (WHO 2014). E-cigarettes were initially developed as a less health-damaging practice to cope with nicotine addiction (Hajek et al. 2014). However, vaping soon moved beyond a cessation-only practice (Weier 2018), and started to serve social, recreational, and sensory expectancies (Pokhrel et al. 2015) and to provide new rituals and social practices (Keane et al. 2017). The e-cigarettes market has at the same time evolved from early brands highlighting advantages over traditional cigarettes to present products with multiple flavours and product versatility (Zhu et al. 2014). E-cigarettes come in a range of models, along with As cigarette smoking has moved to the socioeconomic margins of society, its stigma has increased (Graham 2012). In Norway and many other countries, there has been a dramatic decline in smoking over recent decades.

Simultaneously, a policy of denormalisation of smoking has been favoured by health authorities, redefining tobacco use as socially unacceptable (Peretti-Watel et al. 2014, Saebo 2016). Current smoker identities reflect such redefinitions (Bell et al. 2010). In Scheffels’ (2009) study of young Norwegian smokers, discourses of smoking as stigmatised and immoral dominated, despite some stories reflecting classical positive meanings of smoking as a symbol of freedom. Evans-Polce et al. (2015) identified the process from external stigmatisation to self-stigma with consequences such as guilt, loss of
self-esteem and defensiveness.

Smoker-related stigmatisation has also been driven by possible health consequences of second-hand smoke and company policies against hiring smokers (Stuber, Galea, & Link, 2008). Patients with diseases such as lung cancer may feel particularly stigmatised as the diagnosis is so strongly linked to smoking (Chapple et al. 2004). E-cigarettes are marketed as less harmful alternatives to smoking (Farsalinos and Polosa 2014). However, Lucherini et al. (2017), drawing on a sample of young adult Scottish smokers with disadvantaged backgrounds, observed a more complex picture. First, vaping was perceived as more addictive and less controllable than smoking, due to the lack of ending point and the possibility of vaping indoors. Second, vaping could not replace the social and cultural importance smoking had in these participants’ lives.

Thirlway’s (2016) ethnographic research in a working class area in the UK revealed how different e-cigarette practices had developed: older men constructed e-cigarette use as functional rather than pleasurable, drawing on a narrative of family responsibility. Younger men more often constructed e-cigarettes as a legitimate alternative to smoking cessation that could otherwise conflict with their masculine ethic of working class hedonism (Thirlway 2016). Hoek et al. (2017) found some of their participants replicating the smoking rituals, valuing ‘cigalikes’ for the similarity. Others missed attributes connected with conventional smoking such as combustion and the dense smoke.

Others again developed new and unique vaping rituals. Farrimond (2017) also identified differing motivations for use of, and varying political engagement in, vaping regimes among UK vapers. She constructed three main typologies: vaping for pleasure, vaping as medical treatment and ambivalent e-cigarette use, suggesting that the motives of vaping may be linked to different social identities. Some studies have pointed to the importance of online forums, blogs, YouTube videos (Luo et al. 2014) and Facebook groups in this process (Dai and Hao 2017, Pepper et al. 2017). These findings suggest that vapers as a group are diverse.

One may hypothesise that parts of the vaper culture, such as those who develop rituals for vaping (Hoek et al. 2017) and those who vape for pleasure (Farrimond 2017), may have characteristics typically associated with visible and often self-confident subcultures. A traditional perspective of subcultures is presented by Ken Gelder (2005: 4), defining them as groups of people that are “non-normative and/or marginal through their particular interests and practices”. Groups may represent themselves in this manner, but may also be classified in this manner by others. Such a perspective, focusing on atypical and sometimes deviant groups, was typical in both the Chicago school (Colosi 2010) and the Birmingham school, where these groups were often regarded as cultural responses to socially marginalised positions (Griffin 2011, Rojek and Turner 2000).

However, such perspectives have been criticised, as many may simultaneously participate in several subcultures. Moreover, such research may have overlooked the more ordinary everyday lives of larger groups who are influenced by such subcultures (Bennett and Kahn-Harris 2004). Fine and Kleinman (1979) earlier offered a less rigid understanding, conceptualising subcultures as culturally bounded networks of people who share ideas, material objects, and practices. Following them, subcultures can be interpreted as clusters of cultural elements and forms of distinctions that do not necessarily dominate people’s lives. Thus, they may engage in subcultural practices without identifying as subcultural participants (Thornton 1997).

Vaping is a new activity and its symbolic meanings and associated social practices are constantly being negotiated (Lucherini et al. 2018). In this process, subtle distinctions or symbolic boundaries may be important, as they function to establish personal and collective identities (Williams and Copes 2005). According to Lamont and Moln
ar (2002: 168), symbolic boundaries reflect the struggle over definitions of reality. Drawing symbolic boundaries, we can distinguish “us” from “them”, and separate people into groups that feel similarity, unity and group membership. In this respect, the use of symbolic boundaries also offers people who engage in a certain behaviour the ability to distance themselves from those defined as stigmatised. Similar sociocultural processes have been observed with, for example, occasional smokers: In Scheffels and Tokle’s (2017: 373) study, this group anticipated identities as “someone who smoke, but is not a smoker”.

Similarly Hoek et al. (2012), revealed how social smokers simultaneously devaluated smoking, framed themselves as ‘better’ than smokers and yet continued to smoke to maintain membership of a social network. Generally, such developments illustrate the importance of shared narratives, symbols and rituals for substance use. Heavy alcohol use has, for example, been found to symbolise the embodiment of hegemonic masculinities (Peralta 2007), while cannabis has been linked to political opposition, androgyny and subcultural identification (Sandberg 2013). The data we present in this study show how individuals sharing the same activity – vaping – may, in a similar vein, create and negotiate such subcultural boundaries.