Kate Seear
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 257953 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Kate Seear |
| PRENOMES | Kate |
| SOBRENOME | Seear |
| ASSINATURA | SEEAR K |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Monash University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0886-7069 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 83 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 229 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 83 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2009 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
Asserting human rights in the debate on drug-use stigma
Stigma is increasingly recognized as a key contributor to poorer mental and physical health and wellbeing of people who use drugs and a barrier to accessing health services (Wogen and Restrepo 2020
Navigating the Gap
Partnerships between researchers and consumers—specifically, people who use drugs in the context of our research co‐production—can significantly enhance the relevance and impact of research. Funders increasingly emphasise the value of community‐researcher collaborations, yet translating this commitment into effective practice remains challenging. This commentary draws from our experience in developing an application for a collaborative grant with…
Equivalence of care? A scoping review of prison healthcare experiences of women and non-binary people who use drugs
BACKGROUND: 'Equivalence of care' refers to the principle that imprisoned people should receive healthcare services that are equivalent in quality and accessibility to those available in the community, including drug related healthcare. We aimed to examine existing evidence about women and non-binary peoples' experiences of prison-based drug-related healthcare, how this relates to the equivalence of care principle, and how researchers have concep…
Drug law is a multispecies concern
In this essay, I argue that the law in general and drug law in particular are predicated on hierarchies of meaning and value, including hierarchies in which 'the human' is afforded primacy. This matters, because legal, policy and practice structures that privilege human interests are increasingly understood to be implicated in global injustice, climate and planetary crises. Western legal systems are coming under increasing scrutiny in legal schol…
Performing Hepatitis C, Problematising “Cure”
Direct-acting antiviral (DAA) treatment for the blood-borne virus hepatitis C has shifted conceptions of the disease from a chronic infection – and, in some legal contexts, a “disability” – towards a non-permanent impairment capable of “cure”. The shift in treatment has also led to a shift in law. This paper explores the shift in Australian social security and migration judgments by drawing from performance studies research on disability and reco…
When is a corpse? Narco-necropolitics and the trouble of ungrievable life
When is a corpse? Narco-necropolitics and the trouble of ungrievable life
Is drug-use stigma a breach of human rights law
Whilst international drug policy increasingly recognises the need to address drug-use stigma, there is limited consideration of how drug-use stigma can be addressed through legal frameworks. This commentary considers the relationship between drug-use stigma and human rights law that prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. In doing so, this commentary examines a landmark Australian coronial case that raised the possibility th…
Gender, coca, and the Colombian Peace Agreement
Established in 2016, the Colombian Peace Agreement aimed to resolve longstanding conflict in the country. One of its commitments was to address the 'War on Drugs' including through gender-based approaches. The Agreement includes provisions aimed at supporting those cultivating coca, such as an enrolment process in a coca substitution program aimed at supporting the economic livelihoods of coca growers. In this article, we examine why women coca g…
Labour Unions and Human Rights in Australia
The labour movement and the human rights movement have long converged, with labour unions having become a significant actor in Australian human rights scrutiny processes and able to influence legislation concerning marginalized populations. In this paper, we explore the influence of Australian labour unions on human rights in relation to two population groups—people who use drugs and LGBTIQA+ people. This is based on a detailed examination of lab…
Troubling Drug Law, Political Participation and Human Rights
In recent years, enthusiasm for the role of human rights in shaping global drug policy has grown. Many argue that human rights can guide urgently needed drug policy reforms and instigate less punitive approaches to people who use drugs. To progress human rights-based reforms, international experts have issued guidance on what rights-compliant drug law and policy would look like. This way of thinking about both human rights and law emphasizes law …
Are We Human Or are We Dancer
Are We Human Or are We Dancer?: Sex, Drugs, and Bodies of Law
Stigmatising space-times
Stigma related to blood-borne viruses (BBVs) and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) has been shown to undermine the quality of healthcare. Given the pervasiveness and multiple manifestations of stigma within healthcare settings, recent research has argued that stigma should be addressed 'universally' i.e. for all stigmatising attributes and conditions, across all healthcare services. As part of the development of a universal approach to stigm…
Health-Related Stigma
Encounters with stigma in healthcare settings are well-documented. In recent years, significant attention has begun to be paid to how we can reduce these stigmas, including through the identification and reformation of structural forces that shape and sustain them. This article analyses 30 interviews conducted with clinical and nonclinical healthcare workers, as part of a larger project that aims to reduce health-related stigma for all. A major t…
Searching for Performance in the Legal Archive
As researchers of the ‘legal performance’ of parliamentary human rights scrutiny, we often confront the overwhelmingly textual legal archive and find absences and gaps in the way that processes are documented. These textual records are but remnants of the legal performance or what Molderings might term ‘a fragmentary, petrified vestige of a lively process that took place at a different time in a different place.’ In this article, we deploy this i…
‘The tribunes of the people, the tongues o’ the common mouth’
Shakespeare’s First Folio included publication of Coriolanus, a play that is said to be inflected by political events at the time of its writing and still so by its publication during a period the English parliament was in abeyance, having been dissolved the year before. In this paper, we take up Raffield and Watt’s (2008) invitation to consider the relationship between Shakespeare’s work and the nation-state, by considering the relationship betw…
Conjuring the Ghosts
The notion that ‘drugs kill’ has been mobilised throughout history to restrict the human rights of people who use, possess and supply drugs and to subject them to criminal penalty as part of a global war on drugs. Death figures in and through the war on drugs in multiple ways, including through the current so-called ‘overdose crisis’, through extra-judicial killings by some states, and through use of the death penalty. What influence do these var…
Making kin with more-than-human rights
Globally, calls for drug law reform are growing. Importantly, many argue that reforms should be guided by human rights. These calls, while welcome, assume a shared understanding of and approach to human rights, and that human rights can effectively guide less punitive approaches to drugs. Such assumptions fail to recognise important critiques, including that human rights have not always protected the interests of those who fail to fit normative i…
How do relational practices co-constitute care for people who use drugs? The social and political dimensions of peer-led harm reduction
Our data highlight the vital role of peer connections and peer-led harm reduction practices in fostering safety, solidarity, and connection among communities of people who use drugs. Future research should continue to explore peer-led initiatives within evolving healthcare contexts, considering broader social dynamics and employing innovative conceptual frameworks to promote equitable peer-led harm reduction strategies
The Victorian and Australian Capital Territory human rights charters and the absence of a right to health
Queensland has recently introduced a right to health services, but Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory—the two other Australian jurisdictions with a charter of rights—do not include such a right in their charters. This paper explores whether these jurisdictions should consider introducing a right to health and examines concerns around the potential scope and application of such a right, based on an analysis of reviews of the charters in…
Mournful Mothers and Damaged Damsels
Scrutiny regimes in some Australian parliaments require consideration of human rights impacts of proposed legislation, but routinely ignore gendered impacts of legislation, particularly those relating to alcohol and other drugs. Where women's voices are heard, they are often only listened to according to stereotypes. Drawing on Anne Summers’ work on stereotypes of Australian women, an analysis of reports and hearing transcripts from major parliam…
We've got a present for you
With the advent of highly effective and tolerable direct-acting antiviral treatments for hepatitis C, widespread optimism for and investment in the project of disease elimination now informs the public health response. In Australia, the Commonwealth government has invested heavily in elimination by universally subsidising treatment, promising access for all. Reflecting concerns that commonly accompany ambitious public health projects, cost for go…
Shifting solutions
Global drug policy is in a period of change. Human rights can play an important role in such change, but more work is needed to understand the how rights work and why they might come to matter. Drawing on insights from a major study on drug policy and human rights, I argue that important new dynamics in respect of how drugs are thought to relate to health are emerging, including a conceptualisation of some drugs as capable of generating or improv…
Troubling complaint
The need to grapple with hepatitis C-related stigma and discrimination in Australian health-care settings has been recognised in public policy, and work is underway to address it. But how likely are people to raise a complaint when they experience stigma or discrimination? And how effective and accessible are complaints mechanisms? Given complaint procedures are considered important parts of the delivery of safe and ethical health care, these are…
Making and Breaking ‘Bad’ Habits in Drugs, Law and Human Rights Scrutiny
Certain Australian parliaments have a process of human rights scrutiny, whereby a committee examines whether proposed laws are compatible with human rights. These processes are often driven by rituals or habitual ways of performing scrutiny that privilege reliance on legal advice over community input. Scholars have called for comparative work that helps us better understand whether habit plays a significant role in human rights scrutiny processes…
Hepatitis C data justice
The World Health Organization’s goal of achieving hepatitis C elimination by 2030 is inspiring the use of novel methods to find, diagnose and treat people living with the virus. Globally, rates of hepatitis C treatment uptake have declined. Data-driven public health approaches, including case finding, notification and contact tracing, are being developed and implemented to reach the elimination goal. Drawing on interviews with policymakers, lawye…
The addict as victim
The etiquette of endometriosis
The productive techniques and constitutive effects of 'evidence-based policy' and 'consumer participation' discourses in health policy processes
Therapeutic journeys
The recent growth of so-called stem cell tourism reflects the high optimism that currently surrounds stem cell science. Stem cell treatments for various conditions are increasingly advertised over the Internet as being available at hospitals and clinics around the world. However, most are clinically unproven. Despite numerous warnings from scientists about the dangers posed by such treatments, many individuals are evidently prepared to take the r…
Emergent publics of alcohol and other drug policymaking
Alcohol and other drug (AOD) policy is developed within complex networks of social, economic, and political forces. One of the key ideas informing this development is that of the ‘public’ of AOD problems and policy solutions. To date, however, little scholarly attention has been paid to notions of the public in AOD policymaking. Precisely how are publics articulated by those tasked with policy development and implementation? In this article, we e…
Men's Performance and Image-Enhancing Drug Use as Self-Transformation
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This article investigates how men who inject performance and image-enhancing drugs (PIEDs) describe their experiences of embodiment and masculinity, locating that analysis in the context of contemporary ‘makeover culture’ and the imperatives of self-transformation. Drawing on qualitative data from interviews we conducted with 60 men who inject PIEDs in Australia, our analysis suggests …
Missing Masculinities
The issue of ‘alcohol-fuelled violence’ has been the subject of intense policy debate in Australia. While this debate is warranted, its contours and content have been informed and shaped by a surprisingly narrow range of research resources. Narrow research engagements of this kind warrant scrutiny because they can exclude from consideration crucial issues. In this article we identify one such issue, that of gender. Following a review of the Austr…
A 'messenger of sex'? Making testosterone matter in motivations for anabolic-androgenic steroid injecting
This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following article, accepted for publication in Health Sociology Review. Renae Fomiatti, J. R. Latham, Suzanne Fraser, David Moore, Kate Seear & Campbell Aitken (2019) A ‘messenger of sex’? Making testosterone matter in motivations for anabolic-androgenic steroid injecting, Health Sociology Review, 28:3, 323-338, DOI: 10.1080/14461242.2019.1678398. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Common…
Is another relationship possible? Connoisseurship and the doctor-patient relationship for men who consume performance and image-enhancing drugs
Becoming posthuman
Hepatitis C has long been a public health problem in Australia. ‘Revolutionary’ new drugs with the potential to cure hepatitis C have now emerged. The Australian government has invested heavily in them, and has an ambitious goal to eliminate hepatitis C by 2030. Numerous shifts in policy and practice are required if the elimination agenda is to be realised. This paper explores the significance of these shifts. We ask: what is the race to eliminat…
Rethinking safety and fidelity
Hepatitis C (HCV) is a disease of the liver with a range of potentially debilitating symptoms, the severity of which differ from person to person. HCV is a major public health challenge. Globally an estimated one in 12 persons is affected by the virus, and substantial new transmissions occur each year. The vast majority of new transmissions occur among people who inject drugs, particularly through practices such as sharing of needles, syringes an…
Masculinities, practices and meanings
The use of performance- and image-enhancing drugs (PIEDs) has been a topic of considerable research interest since the 1980s, with the vast majority of PIED consumers being men. In this article, our departure point is a 2005 article by Helen Keane, in which she critically analyses 'the discursive constitution of male steroid users' as psychologically disordered subjects. We extend Keane's insightful feminist analysis by examining the constitution…
Making the abject
The advent of ‘problem-solving courts’ (e.g. drug courts, mental health courts) is claimed by some to represent a significant shift in the administration of justice. Problem-solving courts purport to address the underlying social, medical and/or psychological issues that are often understood as driving certain populations’ contact with criminal justice systems. Although there is a large body of research examining the operation and efficacy of suc…
Complicating cure
In recent years, highly tolerable and effective drugs have emerged promising a radical new 'post-hepatitis C' world. Optimism about medical cure potentially overlooks discrimination and stigma associated with hepatitis C and injecting drug use. Legal frameworks are especially relevant to hepatitis futures, since the law has the potential to reinforce or alleviate stigma and discrimination. This article explores how hepatitis C figures in Australi…
Enacting Alcohol and Other Drug (Testing)-Related Harms in an Australian Drug Court
Alcohol and other drug testing is used in a range of environments including workplaces, schools, sporting tournaments, substance treatment and criminal justice system settings. It is also the cornerstone of the drug court model. Despite its centrality, it has received little scholarly attention. In this article, we address this gap through a study of how the drug-testing regime unfolds at one Australian drug court. Based on ethnographic observati…
The trouble with normalisation
Modern health-care systems have customarily approached hepatitis C in ways that resemble the public health approach to HIV/AIDS known as 'HIV exceptionalism'. HIV exceptionalism describes the unusual emphasis on privacy, confidentiality and consent in approaches to HIV and was partly developed to address HIV/AIDS-related stigma. In the case of hepatitis C, exceptionalist approaches have included diagnosis and treatment by specialist physicians an…
Making Addiction, Making Gender
This paper examines the landmark 2013 judgment of the Australian High Court in Kakavas v Crown Melbourne Limited. This case focused on the activities of Australian businessman Harry Kakavas, a regular gambler at Melbourne’s Crown casino. Kakavas argued that he was a pathological gambler unconscionably exploited by the casino. Using feminist and queer performativity theory, as well as a science and technology studies (STS) approach to the law, I e…
The third shift
This paper explores the experiences of twenty Australian women living with the chronic and incurable gynaecological condition endometriosis. It examines how women become experts in their own care and the ramifications of these processes for women. Women experience patient expertise as a form of work, described here as a ‘third shift’ performed in addition to women’s paid and unpaid work. It argues that both benefits and problems flow from such wo…
Shifting solutions
Global drug policy is in a period of change. Human rights can play an important role in such change, but more work is needed to understand the how rights work and why they might come to matter. Drawing on insights from a major study on drug policy and human rights, I argue that important new dynamics in respect of how drugs are thought to relate to health are emerging, including a conceptualisation of some drugs as capable of generating or improv…
Troubling complaint
The need to grapple with hepatitis C-related stigma and discrimination in Australian health-care settings has been recognised in public policy, and work is underway to address it. But how likely are people to raise a complaint when they experience stigma or discrimination? And how effective and accessible are complaints mechanisms? Given complaint procedures are considered important parts of the delivery of safe and ethical health care, these are…
Echoes and Antibodies
New drugs with the potential to cure hepatitis C have emerged. There is great optimism within medicine about the transformative potential of cure, but this overlooks the entrenched discrimination and stigma associated with both hepatitis C and injecting drug use and the role of law in re/producing it. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders such as policymakers, lawyers, and representatives from peer organisations (N = 30), Latour’s (2013) wo…
Enacting Safety and Omitting Gender
Global momentum for drug law reform is building. But how might such reform be achieved? Many argue that human rights offer a possible normative framework for guiding such reform. There has been very little research on whether human rights processes can actually achieve such aims, however. This paper responds to this knowledge gap. It explores how one human rights mechanism—the “parliamentary rights scrutiny process”—deals with alcohol and other d…
The 'sorry addict
Australian Football League (AFL) player Ben Cousins is one of the most highly acclaimed and recognised athletes in Australia. Followed closely in the media, his off-field activities are subject to as much attention and speculation as those on the field. In 2007, Cousins and his family confirmed long-standing rumours that he was an illicit (non-performance enhancing) drug user. Following a series of incidents, his football contract was terminated …
We've got a present for you
With the advent of highly effective and tolerable direct-acting antiviral treatments for hepatitis C, widespread optimism for and investment in the project of disease elimination now informs the public health response. In Australia, the Commonwealth government has invested heavily in elimination by universally subsidising treatment, promising access for all. Reflecting concerns that commonly accompany ambitious public health projects, cost for go…
Forging new habits
Global drug policy is currently dominated by great enthusiasm about human rights, including the idea that rights can generate less punitive approaches to drugs. But if human rights were an effective framework for the prevention of punitive approaches towards drugs, why haven’t they prevented them previously? One possibility is that rights are less reliable for those society considers ‘less than human’. In Western liberal contexts that valorise vo…
‘Nobody really knows what it is or how to treat it’
This paper examines the phenomenon of non-compliance with health advice among 20 women who have been diagnosed with a chronic and incurable gynaecological condition called endometriosis. Non-compliance with health advice has been identified as a major problem in health education and behavioural literature. Constructed as a problem largely of individual patients, much research focuses upon the traits that predispose individuals to non-compliance a…
Standing up to the beast’
There have been several studies exploring the role public institutions, especially the media, play in the dissemination of information about health risks. To date, scholars have neglected the role that health self-help literature plays in risk communication. In this article, I examine how risks are constructed in self-help literature written for women with the chronic gynaecological condition endometriosis. In addition to informing readers about …
The etiquette of endometriosis
The third shift
This paper explores the experiences of twenty Australian women living with the chronic and incurable gynaecological condition endometriosis. It examines how women become experts in their own care and the ramifications of these processes for women. Women experience patient expertise as a form of work, described here as a ‘third shift’ performed in addition to women’s paid and unpaid work. It argues that both benefits and problems flow from such wo…
Ben Cousins and the ‘double life’
Contemporary neo-liberal public health discourse is increasingly drawn to the language of ‘addiction’. Disease models of addiction are mobilised to account for an expanding array of problematised activities, from the familiar smoking and drinking to newer candidates, such as overeating and gambling. Most models of addiction, including disease models, are underpinned by the idea that, unlike proper citizens of neo-liberal democracies, ‘addicts’ la…
Guilty or Angry? The Politics of Emotion in Accounts of Hepatitis C Transmission
In accounts of hepatitis C, subtle distinctions are frequently made between “innocent” and “guilty” forms of transmission. Although such distinctions have been extensively critiqued, they continue to manifest in indirect ways, such as the articulation of emotions. We argue for a critical approach to the way in which emotions function in accounts of hepatitis C by analyzing textual accounts of hepatitis C, and interviews with people who have hepat…
The 'sorry addict
Australian Football League (AFL) player Ben Cousins is one of the most highly acclaimed and recognised athletes in Australia. Followed closely in the media, his off-field activities are subject to as much attention and speculation as those on the field. In 2007, Cousins and his family confirmed long-standing rumours that he was an illicit (non-performance enhancing) drug user. Following a series of incidents, his football contract was terminated …
Technologies of hope
Recent media portrayals of developments in stem cell research underline the high expectations that surround this field. Trials for stem cell treatments are currently underway around the world; however, very few applications are widely available. In spite of this, a range of purported stem cell therapies are being marketed directly to patients, principally via the Internet. Scientists and clinicians have expressed concerns about the marketing of u…
Rethinking safety and fidelity
Hepatitis C (HCV) is a disease of the liver with a range of potentially debilitating symptoms, the severity of which differ from person to person. HCV is a major public health challenge. Globally an estimated one in 12 persons is affected by the virus, and substantial new transmissions occur each year. The vast majority of new transmissions occur among people who inject drugs, particularly through practices such as sharing of needles, syringes an…
Beyond criminal law
The role of the criminal law in the regulation of drugs and addiction is both well known and the subject of considerable academic debate. Judges are frequently enjoined to make decisions about different kinds of addictions, and the relationships between substance use, addiction, agency, subjectivity, responsibility, treatment and punishment. The criminal law is not the only legal realm in which such questions are being explored, however. Addictio…
Appendix Conference Report
The international journal Contemporary Drug Problems (CDP) held its second biennial conference from August 21-23, 2013, with the theme Complexity: Researching alcohol and other drugs in a multiple world. The main themes of the conference included:* Managing and doing justice to the complexities of alcohol and other drugs (AOD);* Affect-the place of emotions in AOD;* The contribution of Science and Technology Studies theory to AOD research.This fo…
The addict as victim
Therapeutic journeys
The recent growth of so-called stem cell tourism reflects the high optimism that currently surrounds stem cell science. Stem cell treatments for various conditions are increasingly advertised over the Internet as being available at hospitals and clinics around the world. However, most are clinically unproven. Despite numerous warnings from scientists about the dangers posed by such treatments, many individuals are evidently prepared to take the r…
Laws prohibiting peer distribution of injecting equipment in Australia
Making Addiction, Making Gender
This paper examines the landmark 2013 judgment of the Australian High Court in Kakavas v Crown Melbourne Limited. This case focused on the activities of Australian businessman Harry Kakavas, a regular gambler at Melbourne’s Crown casino. Kakavas argued that he was a pathological gambler unconscionably exploited by the casino. Using feminist and queer performativity theory, as well as a science and technology studies (STS) approach to the law, I e…
Addiction veridiction
This paper explores the question of whether and in what ways the law and legal processes work to stabilise addiction as a health problem or ‘disease’. In undertaking this analysis, we also explore the associated gender implications of these practices and the means through which legal processes that stabilise addiction simultaneously stabilise gender. Using the work of science and technologies scholar Bruno Latour, in particular his anthropologica…
Gender, health and the law
Emergent publics of alcohol and other drug policymaking
Alcohol and other drug (AOD) policy is developed within complex networks of social, economic, and political forces. One of the key ideas informing this development is that of the ‘public’ of AOD problems and policy solutions. To date, however, little scholarly attention has been paid to notions of the public in AOD policymaking. Precisely how are publics articulated by those tasked with policy development and implementation? In this article, we e…
Authentic advice for authentic problems? Legal information in Australian classroom drug education
This article examines the legal information provided in Australian alcohol and other drug (AOD) classroom education documents. We focus first on the technical presentation of the information, analysed using Petraglia’s notion of ‘authenticity’ and, second, on the constitution of particular ‘problems’, analysed using Bacchi’s concept of ‘problematisation’. We argue that in working towards deterrence, drug education provides legal information in tw…
Making medicine; producing pleasure
A critical examination of the definition of ‘psychoactive effect’ in Australian drug legislation
The emerging role of lawyers as addiction ‘quasi-experts’
Making the abject
The advent of ‘problem-solving courts’ (e.g. drug courts, mental health courts) is claimed by some to represent a significant shift in the administration of justice. Problem-solving courts purport to address the underlying social, medical and/or psychological issues that are often understood as driving certain populations’ contact with criminal justice systems. Although there is a large body of research examining the operation and efficacy of suc…
Missing Masculinities
The issue of ‘alcohol-fuelled violence’ has been the subject of intense policy debate in Australia. While this debate is warranted, its contours and content have been informed and shaped by a surprisingly narrow range of research resources. Narrow research engagements of this kind warrant scrutiny because they can exclude from consideration crucial issues. In this article we identify one such issue, that of gender. Following a review of the Austr…
The productive techniques and constitutive effects of 'evidence-based policy' and 'consumer participation' discourses in health policy processes
Political science (67 obras) · Law (58 obras) · Sociology (57 obras) · Law (38 obras) · Psychology (37 obras) · Medicine (32 obras) · HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk (29 obras) · Psychiatry (19 obras) · Human rights (18 obras) · Politics (16 obras)