Doctoral Dissertation Research: An Ethnography of Opioid Addiction Treatment Trajectories and Experiences

博士论文研究：阿片类药物成瘾治疗轨迹和经验的民族志

• 批准号: 1823524
• 负责人: Katherine Mason
• 金额: $ 2.51万
• 依托单位: Brown University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-09-15 至 2020-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1823524&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Ethnography; Opioid

The research supported by this award brings anthropological attention to an issue that has long been dominated by public health researchers: understanding how healthcare and criminal justice systems shape the well-being of low-income substance users. Opioid addiction has become a global problem, having reached epidemic proportions in many countries. Governments have responded with myriad policies and programs to reduce the impact of opioid use, on society and on the lives of low-income populations. Unfortunately, sometimes the result is policies that are inconsistent in their messaging and contradictory in their effects. For example, low-income opioid users may continue to face harsh criminal laws even as their access to free and subsidized social services and treatment increases. Therefore, it is important to understand how low-income opioid users experience and negotiate these contradictions in order to further national efforts to craft innovative and effective policies to address this growing social issue. The research will be conducted by Brown University anthropology doctoral student, Parsa Bastani, with the oversight of Dr. Katherine A. Mason. The researcher will use Iran as a case study. Iran is an appropriate site to examine how contradictory policies are experienced because the country has laws that subject illicit substance users to both state-mandated care and surveillance, control, and punishment. This laws have included subjecting anyone who even appears to be an illicit drug user in public spaces to criminal prosecution, even if not in possession of drugs at the time of arrest. Recently, the government amended the laws to mandate that police-apprehended substance users undergo mandatory detoxification while detained in specialized carceral centers followed by aftercare in reintegration-oriented harm reduction and rehabilitation facilities. The researcher will undertake twelve months of ethnographic research to investigate how low-income opioid users experience and respond to being simultaneously criminalized and cared for by the state. He will collect data through semi-structured interviews, participant-observation, and document analysis, to examine: 1) Experiences of criminalization: how do low-income substance users encounter and navigate the criminal justice system? 2) Experiences of care: what impact does care infrastructure have on low-income substance users' experiences with social marginalization? 3) Experiences of addiction: What are low income substance users' moral dispositions toward their drug usage? What do they make of competing moral discourses about addiction? Findings from this research will contribute to understanding the actual effects of laws about illegal opioid use and the factors that enable and hinder the reintegration of highly stigmatized populations into society. The research also will contribute to building more robust social scientific understanding of how marginalized social actors negotiate conflicting social institutions and moral discourses.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项支持的研究将人类学的注意力带到了一个长期以来由公共卫生研究人员主导的问题上：了解医疗保健和刑事司法系统如何塑造低收入物质使用者的福祉。类阿片成瘾已成为一个全球性问题，在许多国家已达到流行病的程度。 各国政府采取了各种政策和计划，以减少阿片类药物使用对社会和低收入人群生活的影响。不幸的是，有时结果是政策的信息不一致，效果相互矛盾。例如，低收入类阿片使用者可能继续面临严厉的刑法，即使他们获得免费和补贴的社会服务和治疗的机会增加。因此，必须了解低收入类阿片使用者如何经历和解决这些矛盾，以便推动国家努力制定创新和有效的政策，解决这一日益严重的社会问题。这项研究将由布朗大学人类学博士生Parsa Bastani在凯瑟琳A博士的监督下进行。梅森研究人员将把伊朗作为一个案例研究。伊朗是一个适当的网站，以研究如何矛盾的政策是经验丰富的，因为该国的法律，使非法药物使用者受到国家授权的照顾和监视，控制和惩罚。这些法律规定，任何人，即使在公共场所看起来是非法吸毒者，也要受到刑事起诉，即使在逮捕时没有持有毒品。最近，政府修订了法律，规定被警察逮捕的吸毒者在被拘留在专门的监狱中心期间必须接受强制戒毒，然后在以重返社会为导向的减少伤害和康复设施中接受善后护理。研究人员将进行为期12个月的人种学研究，以调查低收入阿片类药物使用者如何经历和应对同时被国家定罪和照顾。他将通过半结构化访谈，参与者观察和文件分析收集数据，以研究：1）刑事定罪的经验：低收入物质使用者如何遇到和浏览刑事司法系统？2)护理经历：护理基础设施对低收入药物使用者的社会边缘化经历有什么影响？3)成瘾的经验：低收入物质使用者对他们的药物使用的道德倾向是什么？他们如何看待关于成瘾的相互竞争的道德话语？这项研究的结果将有助于了解有关非法使用阿片类药物的法律的实际影响，以及促使和阻碍高度污名化人群重新融入社会的因素。该研究也将有助于建立更强大的社会科学的理解如何边缘化的社会行动者谈判冲突的社会制度和道德discourses.This奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。