scholarly journals Controlling Drug Users: Forms of Power and Behavioural Regulation in Drug Treatment Services

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Bacon ◽  
Toby Seddon
Keyword(s):  
Drug Treatment ◽  
Drug Users ◽  
Social Regulation ◽  
Control Techniques ◽  
Treatment Services ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
The Social ◽  
Responsive Regulation ◽  
Drug Problems ◽  
And Control

Abstract This article examines the control practices used in drug treatment services to regulate the behaviour of people with drug problems. Drawing on an extensive qualitative study, we developed a conceptual framework, integrating the notion of responsive regulation with Wrong’s sociology of power. The picture that emerges is of a complex ‘web of controls’, combining diverse forms of power and control techniques, used to steer action and shape behavioural outcomes. It is argued that we can understand these control practices within drug treatment as part of broader strategies for the social regulation of the poor, built on deep-rooted hybrids of punishment and welfare. The article concludes with the suggestion that drug treatment represents an important site for understanding penal power today.

scholarly journals Patriarchal Regime of the Spectacle: Racial and Gendered Gaze in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Fiction

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moussa Pourya Asl ◽  
Nurul Farhana Low bt Abdullah
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Social Regulation ◽  
Complex Relation ◽  
Self Image ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Gendered Gaze ◽  
Affective Consequences ◽  
And Control ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This article attempts to evince the political, cultural and affective consequences of Jhumpa Lahiri’s diasporic writings and their particular enunciations of the literary gaze. To do so, it details the manner in which the stories’ exercise of visual operations rigidly corresponds with those of the Panopticon. The essay argues that Lahiri’s narrative produces a kind of panoptic machine that underpins the ‘modes of social regulation and control’ that Foucault has explained as disciplinary technologies. By situating Lahiri’s stories, “A Real Durwan” and “Only Goodness,” within a historical-political context, this essay aims at identifying the way in which panopticism defines her fiction as both a record of and a participant in the social, sexual and political ‘paranoia’ behind the propaganda of America’s self-image as the land of freedom. We maintain that Lahiri’s fiction situates itself in complex relation to the postcolonial concerns of the late twentieth century, suggesting that through their fascination with a visual literalization of the panoptic machine, and by privileging the masculine gaze, the stories legitimate the perpetuation of socially prescribed notion of sexual difference.  Keywords: Gaze, Sexual difference, Panopticon, A Real Durwan, Only Goodness

FC03-05 - An evaluation of service provision by community drug treatment services for opioid dependent pregnant drug users in England and Wales

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (S2) ◽  
pp. 1826-1826 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Perez-Montejano ◽  
E. Finch ◽  
K. Wolff
Keyword(s):  
Drug Treatment ◽  
Service Provision ◽  
Drug Users ◽  
Postal Survey ◽  
Chi Square ◽  
Home Office ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Methadone Dosage ◽  
Treatment Services ◽  
Opioid Users

IntroductionOver the last decade a series of guidelines and recommendations have been published in the UK by the Department of Health, the Home Office, Professional and Non-Professional bodies. However, an optimal strategy and consensus in the management and care of opioid dependent pregnant users has yet to be established.ObjectivesDetermination of existing methods for identifying and managing pregnancy in opioid users prescribed methadone by NHS Treatment Services and regional differences.AimTo survey the management, treatment and follow-up of pregnant opioid users prescribed methadone by Drug Treatment Services in England and Wales.MethodsIn 2006 a POSTAL survey was conducted among 223 Community Drug Treatment Services (CDTS).ResultsSixty-six percent of CDTS responded to the survey (n = 154/233). A Chi-square, Mann_Whitney U Test and/or Kruskal-Wallis analysis revealed significant differences in the composition of CDTS and service provision across regions. Half of CDTS (55.3%) provided a methadone dosage regime lower than that recommended for non-pregnant drug users. There were also significant variations on how professionals approached the management of pregnant opioid users. CDTS with an addiction specialist were significantly more likely (p < .01) to advocate high doses of methadone whereas those with a midwife, obstetrician or social worker involved were more likely (p < .05) to suggest low dose methadone and/or detoxification.ConclusionsService provision for pregnant opioid users is comprehensive but there is still variability in some aspects of the treatment received. The way in which methadone is prescribed is not always optimal. Further work is required in this area.

scholarly journals The Same Risk, the Different Vulnerability? Social Environment as Risk-generating Factor in Injecting Drug Users and Sex Workers

2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-162
Author(s):  
Bojan Žikić
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Drug Users ◽  
Social Epidemiology ◽  
Injecting Drug Users ◽  
The Social ◽  
Epidemiological Risk ◽  
And Control

Social epidemiology of blood-borne diseases has been investigated in Belgrade sex workers and injecting drug users. The overall aim of the study was to reveal factors responsible for social epidemiological exposure and vulnerability of the members of those groups, and in this paper some outcomes are discussed, namely those which suggest a little bit different patterns of establishing such vulnerability for injecting drug users and sex workers respectively. It looks like the social environment plays much greater part in producing social epidemiological risk for the sex workers than for the injecting drug users. Factors stemming from the social environment responsible for production of the social epidemiological risk are far more beyond reach and control of the sex workers than it is so with the injecting drug users.

E-Commerce as Knowledge Management

2011 ◽  
pp. 2768-2787 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel McLean ◽  
Nigel M. Blackie
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
The Social ◽  
Business To Consumer ◽  
Commercial Organizations ◽  
And Control

This chapter constructs the concept of e-commerce as knowledge management. The socially constructed approach to knowledge management is adopted. Through qualitative research, rooted in the Social Constructionist-Critical Theory paradigm, the chapter examines how consumers use the Internet in commercially related activity. Through semi-structured interviews with consumers three main themes are identified and explored (interaction with commercial organizations, consumer-to-consumer interaction, power and control in business-to-consumer interaction). The chapter concludes that the Internet facilitates the construction and sharing of knowledge amongst consumers, but appears to strengthen barriers and boundaries between consumers and companies. An illustration of how companies could effectively utilize the Internet to communicate with customers is offered in an analysis of a discussion forum.

Interpersonal Freedom and Freedom of Action

1955 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-363
Author(s):  
Felix E. Oppenheim
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
The Social ◽  
Conversational Language ◽  
And Control ◽  
Freedom Of Action

When speaking of freedom, La Bruyère's word comes to mind—that everything has been said and that we come too late to add anything. Yet an analysis of the concept of freedom may be warranted for the very reason that it is being used by everyone to refer to whatever he considers valuable, from obedience to law (positive or natural) to autonomy and economic abundance. I believe that it is possible to assign to “freedom” in its different aspects meanings which are emotively neutral and operationally testable, and thereby to rescue for the social sciences generally and for political science in particular an important set of concepts, closely related as they are to those of power and control.One would have to start with disentangling the widely different senses in which “freedom” is being used indiscriminately. I shall deal with freedom in only two of its many meanings, interpersonal freedom and freedom of action. One of the difficulties will be to steer a middle course between the vagueness of conversational language and the awkwardness of a precise terminology; but I hope to demonstrate that such an endeavor is no idle exercise in semantics but a necessary prerequisite for the fruitful investigation of social and political phenomena.

Differentiated visibilities: RT Arabic’s narration of Russia’s role in the Syrian war

2019 ◽  
pp. 175063521988907 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deena Dajani ◽  
Marie Gillespie ◽  
Rhys Crilley
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Military Presence ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
Strategic Narratives ◽  
Russian State ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Control

This article focuses on the social media content of RT Arabic – formerly Russia Today – the Russian state-funded international news media organization. It presents results of a qualitative analysis of social media posts in order to assess whether and how RT Arabic constructs a strategic narrative of its involvement in the war in Syria. It also contributes to conceptualizations of how state-sponsored strategic narratives operate in practice and can be mobilized as a soft power resource. Our key finding is that, while Russia’s military presence is rendered almost invisible on RT Arabic, its role as a political and diplomatic actor is highly visible. Although Syrian civilians feature as the most prominent actors, they do so mostly as helpless victims and passive witnesses. Syria is represented as a non-sovereign, dysfunctional state, vulnerable to incursion by foreign forces that are vying for power and control in the region. In RT’s representation of the conflict, Russia is portrayed as coming to the aid of Syrians and Syria, as a benign presence promoting the establishment of good governance and skilfully managing the complex diplomatic relations surrounding the conflict. Rather than using straightforward propagandistic or hard-line ideological narratives, RT Arabic creates its own style of persuasive soft power on social media. This style is characterized by the differentiated visibilities afforded to Russia’s military, diplomatic and political roles. Deftly balancing exposure and concealment, RT Arabic performs a legitimating function – rendering Russia’s presence and power in a positive light.

On the social construction of geomedia technologies

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Fast ◽  
Emilia Ljungberg ◽  
Lotta Braunerhielm
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Social Relevance ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
The Social ◽  
Public Lives ◽  
And Control

Geomedia technologies represent an advanced set of digital media devices, hardwares, and softwares. Previous research indicates that these place contingent technologies are currently gaining significant social relevance, and contribute to the shaping of contemporary public lives and spaces. However, research has yet to empirically examine how, and for whom, geomedia technologies are made relevant, as well as the role of these technologies in wider processes of social and spatial (re-)production. This special issue contributes valuable knowledge to existing research in the realm of communication geography, by viewing the current “geomediascape” through the lens of social constructivist perspectives, and by interrogating the reciprocal shaping of technology, the social, and space/place. Scrutinizing the social construction of geomedia technologies in various empirical contexts and in relation to different social groups, the essays deal with important questions of power and control, and ultimately challenge the notion of (geo)mediatization as a neutral process.

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