Narrative Politics in Policy Discourse: The Debate Over Safe Injection Sites in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

2021 ◽  
pp. 009145092199382
Author(s):  
Ryan J. Lofaro ◽  
Hugh T. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Harm Reduction ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
People Who Use Drugs ◽  
Opioid Overdose ◽  
Policy Proposal ◽  
The Social ◽  
Narrative Politics ◽  
The Face ◽  
Safe Injection ◽  
A Site

Safe injection sites are spaces where people who inject drugs can do so under the supervision of staff at the sites who attempt to revive them if they overdose. Public officials in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, have proposed the sites as a means to reduce opioid overdose deaths in the city, a policy proposal that has been politically and legally contested. This article uses the Narrative Politics model to elucidate the concerns, values, and aspirations of the competing narratives in the public discourse over safe injection sites in Philadelphia. Despite the aspirations expressed within the Harm Reduction narrative to open such a site, opposition from the Nimby (not in my backyard) narrative has, at the time of this research, successfully precluded such a step. Other narratives in the discourse include the Abstinence narrative opposing safe injection sites and the Social Justice narrative opposed to incarceration but also hesitant to wholeheartedly endorse the Harm Reduction narrative for its delayed advocacy of compassionate treatment of people who use drugs now that the face of the person who uses opioids is a white one. In addition to juxtaposing competing narratives against one another and considering their alignments, disagreements, and interactions, the authors consider absences and shared presuppositions. The social construction of the purported drug addict varies in some ways between and among the prevailing narratives; in other ways, all the narratives problematize “addiction” as an affliction that justifies techniques of discipline aimed at caring for and controlling the population.

scholarly journals Care and affective relations: Social justice and sociology

2020 ◽  
pp. 003802612095274
Author(s):  
Kathleen Lynch ◽  
Manolis Kalaitzake ◽  
Margaret Crean
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Egalitarian Theory ◽  
A Site ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Status Recognition ◽  
Affective Relations

This article examines the ways in which the care-indifferent and gendered character of much political egalitarian theory has contributed to a disregard for the care-relational dimensions of social injustice within the social sciences. It demonstrates how the lack of in-depth engagement with affective relations of love, care and solidarity has contributed to an underestimation of their pivotal role in generating injustices in the production of people in their humanity. While humans are political, economic and cultural beings, they are also what Tronto has termed homines curans. Yet, care, in its multiple manifestations, is treated as a kind of ‘cultural residual’, an area of human life that the dominant culture neglects, represses and cannot even recognize for its political salience. If sociology takes the issue of relational justice as seriously as it takes issues of redistribution, recognition and political representation, this would provide an intellectual avenue for advancing scholarship that recognizes that much of life is lived, and injustices are generated, outside the market, formal politics and public culture. A new sociology of affective care relations could enhance a normatively-led sociology of inequality, that is distinguishable from, but intersecting with, a sociology of inequality based on class (redistribution), status (recognition) and power (representation). It would also help change public discourse about politics by making affective in/justices visible intellectually and politically, and in so doing, identifying ways in which they could be a site of resistance to capitalist values and processes.

Epistemological Ambivalence: Richard Rorty on Religion and Public Discourse

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-109
Author(s):  
Terrence Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Richard Rorty ◽  
Social Good ◽  
The Public ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Public Sphere

The late Richard Rorty famously argued that faith-based positions grounded in comprehensive worldviews or unassailable texts served as ‘conversation-stoppers’ and should be excluded from the public sphere. This article argues that Rorty’s position flies in the face of his own postmodern epistemology as well as his insistence on the humility and virtues that should attend the collective pursuit of the social good. It suggests that there are two Rortys at work and that his epistemological ambivalence undermines the force of his argument.

scholarly journals Home as a Site of Resistance: A Study on Agunpakhi by Hasan Azizul Huq

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-280
Author(s):  
Md. Shamim Mondol
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experiences ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Bell Hooks ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Common ◽  
Partition Of India ◽  
A Site

This paper is an attempt to investigate Hasan Azizul Huq’s much awaited novel Agunpakhi to explore the potencies and potentials of home as an empowering site of resistance. The novel commonly studied as a counter narrative on the Partition of India has multilayered implications embedded in it. One such dimension is the exploration of home place by contesting the common ideas to redefine its scopes. Home is normally studied as a sequestered space of deprivation and gendered marginalization. The inhabitants inhibited there by the social apparatuses are simply seized mentally. The consequent ideas built around home as a site showcase it impotence, and imposing character with no productive aspects. But the lived experiences of the inhabitants and their resultant practices if studied out of the box exhibit the excellences of home as a nurturing ground for raising resistances against the oppressors. To concentrate on these empowering aspects of the space, I will draw on bell hooks for her insights on home as a site of resistance. The research will advance the argument that home is a place of care and nurturance in the face of harsh realities facilitating the emergence of voices and subjectivity leading to emancipation from exigencies of marginalization.  

scholarly journals Palliative care & the injustice of mass incarceration

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-16
Author(s):  
Helen Hudson ◽  
Amélie Perron ◽  
David Kenneth Wright
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Harm Reduction ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Aging Population ◽  
Social Disadvantage ◽  
People Who Use Drugs ◽  
Political Work ◽  
The Social

Due to the criminalization of marginalized people, many markers of social disadvantage are overrepresented among prisoners. With an aging population, end of life in prison thus becomes a social justice issue that nurses must contend with, engaging with the dual suffering of dying and of incarceration. However, prison palliative care is constrained by the punitive mandate of the institution and has been critiqued for normalizing death behind bars and appealing to discourses of individual redemption. This paper argues that prison palliative has much to learn from harm reduction. Critical reflections from harm reduction scholars and practitioners hold important insights for prison palliative care: decoupled from its historical efforts to reshape the social terrain inhabited by people who use drugs, harm reduction can become institutionalized and depoliticized. Efforts to address the harms of substandard palliative care must therefore be interwoven with the necessarily political work of addressing the injustice of incarceration.

scholarly journals Willful ignorance as resistance, harm reduction workers and ruling relations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Maxim Piercey Dalton
Keyword(s):  
Harm Reduction ◽  
People Who Use Drugs ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Willful Ignorance ◽  
Organizational Policies ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Neoliberal Governance ◽  
Policies And Procedures ◽  
Study Results ◽  
A Site

This paper will explore how front-line harm reduction workers govern the space of agency services. In order to study how this is done this writer completed an institutional ethnography to illuminate how power operates in the day-to-day practice of a harm reduction agency. Harm reduction services have been criticized as a site of neoliberal governance through risk-management. This study aims to explore how harm reduction workers perform and understand their role within their agency. This writer interviewed front-line staff members that distribute harm reduction material, asking them about their adherence to their organizational policies and procedures. The policies represented by the text of the signage within agencies was also analyzed. Study results showed that staff members used wilful ignorance to allow people to use drugs on agency premises, provided they did so in a discreet manner. Harm reduction workers also tried to reduce the suffering, and promote the larger political goals of harm reduction, to help people who use drugs.

scholarly journals Willful ignorance as resistance, harm reduction workers and ruling relations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Maxim Piercey Dalton
Keyword(s):  
Harm Reduction ◽  
People Who Use Drugs ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Willful Ignorance ◽  
Organizational Policies ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Neoliberal Governance ◽  
Policies And Procedures ◽  
Study Results ◽  
A Site

This paper will explore how front-line harm reduction workers govern the space of agency services. In order to study how this is done this writer completed an institutional ethnography to illuminate how power operates in the day-to-day practice of a harm reduction agency. Harm reduction services have been criticized as a site of neoliberal governance through risk-management. This study aims to explore how harm reduction workers perform and understand their role within their agency. This writer interviewed front-line staff members that distribute harm reduction material, asking them about their adherence to their organizational policies and procedures. The policies represented by the text of the signage within agencies was also analyzed. Study results showed that staff members used wilful ignorance to allow people to use drugs on agency premises, provided they did so in a discreet manner. Harm reduction workers also tried to reduce the suffering, and promote the larger political goals of harm reduction, to help people who use drugs.

scholarly journals Measuring adulterants in street drugs: Implementation of drug residue testing using portable mass spectrometry in a Northeastern U.S. harm reduction program, 2019-2020

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathieu Boulad ◽  
Atsushi Matsumoto ◽  
Claudia Santelices ◽  
Thomas J. Stopka
Keyword(s):  
Harm Reduction ◽  
Mass Spectrometer ◽  
People Who Use Drugs ◽  
Opioid Overdose ◽  
Portable Devices ◽  
Portable Mass Spectrometer ◽  
Harm Reduction Intervention ◽  
Reduction Strategies ◽  
Drug Checking ◽  
Fentanyl Analogues

Abstract Background: Fatal opioid overdose deaths involving illicitly manufactured fentanyl continue to escalate in the U.S. Drug checking services, as a harm reduction intervention for people who use drugs, has gained support as an effective strategy to reduce fatal overdoses. We examined implementation of drug checking services using portable devices in a syringe services program in the Northeastern U.S. Methods: Trained staff collected trace drug specimens from used paraphernalia provided by participants who requested drug checking services. All the specimens were tested using a portable mass spectrometer and sub-samples were tested for the detection of fentanyl using fentanyl testing strips. We assessed characteristics of participants who used drug checking services, self-reported types of trace specimens of substances that participants reported providing for testing, the actual mass spectrometer test results of these specimens, and agreement of the mass spectrometer and fentanyl testing strips results in detection of fentanyl and fentanyl analogues. Results: Of 155 unique participants who provided demographic information, 59% identified as male and 74.1% as White, with a mean age of 37.7 years. Based on analysis of 396 specimens tested with the portable mass spectrometer, the most common single substance detected was fentanyl (37.7%), without a trace of heroin or other adulterants, followed by methamphetamine (18.2%), and cocaine (13.6%). Fentanyl and fentanyl analogues were detected in specimens provided by participants that were reported as heroin (60.8%), cocaine (11.1%), and methamphetamine (6.7%). We found modest agreement of testing results between the mass spectrometer and fentanyl testing strips. Conclusions: Use of drug checking services within syringe services programs is in its initial test stages. Knowledge about the contents of substances purchased, and conversations between syringe services program participants and staff, have the potential to facilitate informed decisions to decrease overdose risks through engagement in harm reduction strategies. Through analysis of newly implemented drug checking services, we noted participant characteristics and dissonance between participants’ reports of the trace drug specimens submitted for testing and the actual drugs and adulterants detected by mass spectrometer results, which has implications for overdose risk, highlighting opportunities for harm reduction responses.

scholarly journals Patrimonial Reflections

Ethnologies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 107-128
Author(s):  
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
The Body ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Intangible Heritage ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
A Site ◽  
Heritage Policy

The author of this paper argues that the rise of cultural heritage is perhaps the chief example of a newfound valuation of cultural practices and objects in terms of their expediency for economic and political purposes. This is culture as a resource: a novel configuration in which culture is now a central expedient in everything from creating jobs to reducing crime, from changing the face of cities through cultural tourism to managing differences and conflicts within the population. In this context, heritage provides a strong but flexible language for staking claims to culture and making claims based on culture. He suggests that the 2003Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritagesignals a reformation of global heritage policy. Where earlier UNESCO efforts were content to document and archive expressions of folklore and traditional culture, its intangible heritage initiatives aim to assure the transmission and continuity of traditional practicesin situ. This requires direct intervention in the communities involved. UNESCO enlists intangible heritage as an instrument for safeguarding community, a social and moral good perceived to be threatened by globalization. Intangible heritage has emerged as an instrument in the production of a strong (but not exclusive) sense of belonging for members of cultural communities within (and sometimes across) states. Population groups objectify their practices and expressions as “intangible heritage” and at the same time they subjectify themselves as “communities”. Government can then act on the social field through communities and by means of, among other things, heritage policies. The author also points out that many heritage practices take the body as their central objects – they turn the body into a site of performance. Indeed, intangible heritage is very much about the ways in which culture is embodied and the ways in which bodies are cultured.

Terrified

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Bail
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
Muslim Americans ◽  
Media Messages ◽  
American Media ◽  
The Face ◽  
September 11 Attacks ◽  
The Public Sphere

In July 2010, Terry Jones, the pastor of a small fundamentalist church in Florida, announced plans to burn two hundred Qur'ans on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Though he ended up canceling the stunt in the face of widespread public backlash, his threat sparked violent protests across the Muslim world that left at least twenty people dead. This book demonstrates how the beliefs of fanatics like Jones are inspired by a rapidly expanding network of anti-Muslim organizations that exert profound influence on American understanding of Islam. The book traces how the anti-Muslim narrative of the political fringe has captivated large segments of the American media, government, and general public, validating the views of extremists who argue that the United States is at war with Islam and marginalizing mainstream Muslim-Americans who are uniquely positioned to discredit such claims. Drawing on cultural sociology, social network theory, and social psychology, the book shows how anti-Muslim organizations gained visibility in the public sphere, commandeered a sense of legitimacy, and redefined the contours of contemporary debate, shifting it ever outward toward the fringe. The book illustrates the author's pioneering theoretical argument through a big-data analysis of more than one hundred organizations struggling to shape public discourse about Islam, tracing their impact on hundreds of thousands of newspaper articles, television transcripts, legislative debates, and social media messages produced since the September 11 attacks. The book also features in-depth interviews with the leaders of these organizations, providing a rare look at how anti-Muslim organizations entered the American mainstream.

Chemical Reactions of Iodoform in the Study of Post-Extraction Alveolites

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (10) ◽  
pp. 2378-2381
Author(s):  
Cristian Budacu ◽  
Mihai Constantin ◽  
Iulia Chiscop ◽  
Carmen Gabriela Stelea ◽  
Raluca Dragomir
Keyword(s):  
Healing Process ◽  
Maxillofacial Surgery ◽  
Post Treatment ◽  
Dental Extraction ◽  
Oral And Maxillofacial Surgery ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Mucosal Regeneration ◽  
Prophylactic Measures ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face

Post-operative alveolitis is a topical issue in dental practice, which is also reflected by the etiopathogenic aspects. The conservative principle requires the maintenance of dento-periodontal units in the arch for as long as possible, but there are situations where dental extraction is required. The healing process of the post-surgical wound is complex and involves processes of gingival mucosal regeneration and bone reshaping, involving several local factors: wound size, presence of infection, alveolar vascularization, intraalveolar foreign bodies, and general factors, especially general condition, age and body reactivity. The quality, structure, maintenance, and retraction of the clot are key factors in the formation of connective tissue during the healing of the post-extraction would. At the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Clinic of Gala�i, during a 2-year period between January 2015 and December 30, 2016, 2780 patients that required surgery - dental extraction were consulted and diagnosed. We found that among those 2780 patients with dental extractions 105 (3.77%) had post-treatment alveolitis. No post-surgical alveolitis from the case study was complicated by osteomyelitis of the jaws or by suppurations of the superficial or deep compartments of the face. The prophylactic measures in each dental extraction, together with the correct and timely curative treatment, combined with the dentist�s competence and responsibility, can shorten the time of suffering, actively combating the risk factor and accelerating the social reintegration of the patient with post-treatment alveolitis.

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