Drugs, Brains and Other Subalterns

Public Debate and the New Materialist Politics of Addiction

Bibliographic Data

ID5113049
AuthorsFraser (0000-0003-1018-5865, Curtin University, corresponding author), Suzanne Fraser, Kylie Valentine (0000-0003-4785-484X, UNSW Sydney), Mats Ekendahl (0000-0003-2295-4078, Stockholm University)
Year2018
Volume24
Issue4
Pages58-86
Publication date2018-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBody & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1357-034X • E-ISSN: 1460-3632
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1357034x18781738
OpenAlexW2808797688
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited51

Over the last few decades feminists, science and technology studies scholars and others have grappled with how to take materiality into account in understanding social practices, subjectivity and events. One key area for these debates has been drug use and addiction. At the same time, neuroscientific accounts of drug use and addiction have also arisen. This development has attracted criticism as simplistically reinstating material determinism. In this article we draw on 80 interviews with health professionals directly involved in drug-related public policy and service provision in three countries to identify the main ways the neuroscience of addiction (and thus the agency of the brain) is understood. We analyse these understandings using contemporary posthumanist theory to develop new options for conceptualizing matter in public responses to addiction. We close by calling for a new approach to addiction and the brain based on a process model of materiality and public debate

Addiction · Aesthetics · Determinism · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Materialism · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Subjectivity · Innovative Human-Technology Interaction · Law · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations · Neuroscience · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology