The Malleable Addict: Heroin Addiction, Therapeutic Treatment and Biopolitics in Southwest China

The Malleable Addict: Heroin Addiction, Therapeutic Treatment and Biopolitics in Southwest China

Sandra Teresa Hyde - Professor of Anthropology and Social Studies of Medicine, McGill University

Friday, May 6, 2011 - 2:00pm to 3:30pm
Room 105, Department of Anthropology See map
10 Sachem Street
New Haven, CT 06511

This talk focuses on the shift in southwest China from prison sentences to residential care and treatment for heroin addicts. Following one residential \treatment community, mobile global practices link Western 12-step Narcotics Anonymous to self-healing and older Chinese practices like Maoist speak bitterness. In China it is in the drug aid theatres of the world where the Sunlight NGO traveled to stave off drug trafficking across national borders, and to redress newly defined psychosocial problems associated with illicit drug consumption. Through the process of unraveling on the ground practices of one international humanitarian NGO and some of its therapeutic models, one begins to see new forms of Chinese biopolitics. In the process of providing residential treatment and care, biopolitics envelopes the malleable addict time and time again. Sandra Teresa Hyde has an MPH from the University of Hawaii and a PhD in Medica Anthropology from UC Berkeley/San Francisco. Her current research is on treatment for opiate addiction in China, which dovetails nicely with her ongoing focus on the cultural politics of infectious diseases, humanitarianism and governmentality. Her publications include the edited volume Postcolonial Disorders and her monograph Eating Spring Rice: The Cultural Politics of AIDS in Southwest China.

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Sponsored by the Council on East Asian Studies and the Department of Anthropology
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