Addiction in the Making

Garriott, William; Raikhel, Eugene

doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-102214-014242

Cited by 52 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 108 publications

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“…In doing so, however, I do not treat "medicalization itself as a symptom of social inequality and social dysfunction in modern states" (Davis 2010, 160). Rather, I make the case for understanding medicalization in dialogue with recent anthropological studies of gambling addiction (Schüll 2012;Garriott and Raikhel 2015). This scholarship sees gambling addiction as a distributed phenomenon across individuals, technologies, and therapeutics.…”

Section: A Clinical Economy Of Speculationmentioning

confidence: 96%

A Clinical Economy of Speculation: Financial Trading and Gambling Disorder in Spain

Núñez

2017

Cult. Anthropol.

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This article concerns itself with financial traders in Spain who have been diagnosed with gambling disorder. It analyzes what I call the clinical economy of speculation, in which the category of problem gambler is repurposed to draw new lines around proper financial trading. In exploring the expansion of post–financial crisis regulatory mechanisms for credit and debt, as well as widening inequalities across the field of investment, I depict how both traders and clinicians become invested in medicalizing trading as gambling disorder. My theorizing interrogates whether and why common speculative practices are seen as sick and unsafe when everyday people, instead of banks and other financial institutions, perform them. I argue that the pathologized trader is an attempt to regulate, at the individual level, the increasing use of borrowed capital to make financial profits. The commodification of debt, however, is not a gender‐neutral development. Female traders pay a greater price for venturing into the heights of finance. This focus on gender brings into view the redefinition of credit and debt within the domain of trading, and shows the role of debt‐fueled financial speculation in the expansion of financial markets. These ethnographic findings are particularly relevant in a country like Spain, where the Great Recession has bred more new millionaires than ever before, even as the smaller fish of the economy are being medicalized and sometimes even incarcerated.

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Section: A Clinical Economy Of Speculationmentioning

confidence: 96%

A Clinical Economy of Speculation: Financial Trading and Gambling Disorder in Spain

Núñez

2017

Cult. Anthropol.

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“…Eve Sedgwick (1993) argues that the locus of addiction lies not only in the substance itself or in the body, but also in the overarching abstraction that governs the narrative relationship between them; another vein of research suggests that nineteenth-century accounts of addiction as "diseases of the will" have been translated into a "matter of choice" in modern capitalistic settings (Garriott and Raikhel 2015;Reith 2004). However, rather than providing a detailed historical account of the development of the concept of addiction, as provided by Reith (2004), Brodie and Redfield (2002), Levine (1978) and Sedgwick (1993), in this article we explore two different types of addiction in order to highlight the relationship between self, substance, and society.…”

Section: Self Substance and Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this article, we investigate the role of the addictive substance in the "making" of addiction and categories of people in Denmark (Garriott & Raikhel 2015;Hacking 1985). Our aim is to explore the relationship between specific substances, societal structures, moral values, and the experience of effects in a particular cultural setting.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self, substance, and society

Kristensen¹,

Johansen²

2018

TFSS

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The article explores the role of addictive substances, and how they constitute the experience of pleasure and categories of addictions (Garriott & Raikhel 2015). In two separate studies, one of the users in heroin-assisted treatment of addiction in Denmark and the other of consumers’ food perceptions, we became interested in the roles played by the addictive substance and the concept of addiction – as a cultural category with social, moral, and political significance (Keane 2002) – among our informants. More specifically, we focused on how pleasure is constrained, made, or enacted in societal responses and treatment practices by comparing the case of heroin and sugar. The juxtaposition of the two types of addiction serves to illustrate the relationship between a specific substance, cultural categories, and responses.Analysis focuses on the interplay between the addict, the substance, social networks, and institutions. We argue that both the addict as a subject and the effect of the addictive substance are produced by a network of actors, experiences, moral values, societal institutions, and public discourses. The two cases show the importance of attending to substance effect in this context, and to variations in a single cultural setting – ultimately demonstrating that substance use and the experience of pleasure are not simply matters of choice but rather results of embodied conditioning, whereby social forces constrain the experience of pleasure. In both cases, recovery becomes a means of finding what is perceived to be one’s inner core in a society marked by industrial interference and artificiality, manifested in – among many other objects – certain chemical substances. In some situations, however, by regaining some degree of autonomy and by getting in touch with one’s “inner core” the substance becomes a possible actant for the enjoyment of pleasure

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“…They highlight instead the constructedness of addiction. They point to its reliance on assumptions of 'normal' subjectivity (in particular ideas of rationality and self control), its contingency on social and historical forces, and therefore its multiplicity (Fraser et al, 2014;Garriott and Raikhel, 2015;Reinarman and Granfield, 2015). Through such critiques, it is clear that addiction remains a contested concept despite its positioning by dominant biomedical and neuroscientific experts as known and certain.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Celebrity enactments of addiction on Twitter

Dwyer

Fraser

2017

Convergence

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Commentators suggest the social media platform, Twitter, might afford challenges to hegemonic knowledge by providing voice to those outside traditional media and by enabling vigorous public discussion and contestation of dominant ideas and concepts. In this article, we ask whether such affordances might be reshaping the culturally charged concept of addiction and, in turn, its accompanying abject and maligned subject, the 'addict'. To explore this question, we examine Twitter messages about addiction posted by celebrities. These people are among the most highly followed Twitter account holders, meaning their Twitter messages can reach millions of people. Our analysis examines how specific addiction problems, and their solutions, are being constituted through the tweeting practices of celebrities. We also consider the unintentional effects these messages produce. Finally, we examine the ways in which these messages are discussed and contested by the audiences of the celebrities. We find celebrity Twitter activity re-enacts familiar realities of addiction, realities that collapse drug use with harm and addiction, addiction with pathology and death. Abstinence is posed as the only effective and genuine response, and the contradictions in simultaneously individualizing action against addiction and condemning stigmatization are ignored. Despite the 'revolutionary' potential of Twitter posited by advocates and some scholars, when it comes to addiction, it seems, the global, uncensored, 'free' communication on Twitter serves largely to validate and perpetuate dominant addiction concepts and the stigma and discrimination these concepts evoke.

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Addiction in the Making

Cited by 52 publications

References 108 publications

A Clinical Economy of Speculation: Financial Trading and Gambling Disorder in Spain

A Clinical Economy of Speculation: Financial Trading and Gambling Disorder in Spain

Self, substance, and society

Celebrity enactments of addiction on Twitter

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