80 research outputs found
Chemical Youth
This open access book explores how young people engage with chemical substances in their everyday lives. It builds upon and supplements a large body of literature on young peopleâs use of drugs and alcohol to highlight the subjectivities and socialities that chemical use enables across diverse socio-cultural settings, illustrating how young people seek to avoid harm, while harnessing the beneficial effects of chemical use. The book is based on multi-sited anthropological research in Southeast Asia, Europe and the US, and presents insights from collaborative and contrasting analysis. Hardon brings new perspectives to debates across drug policy studies, pharmaceutical cultures and regulation, science and technology studies, and youth and precarity in post-industrial societies
Chemical Youth
This open access book explores how young people engage with chemical substances in their everyday lives. It builds upon and supplements a large body of literature on young peopleâs use of drugs and alcohol to highlight the subjectivities and socialities that chemical use enables across diverse socio-cultural settings, illustrating how young people seek to avoid harm, while harnessing the beneficial effects of chemical use. The book is based on multi-sited anthropological research in Southeast Asia, Europe and the US, and presents insights from collaborative and contrasting analysis. Hardon brings new perspectives to debates across drug policy studies, pharmaceutical cultures and regulation, science and technology studies, and youth and precarity in post-industrial societies
Anthropology with algorithms?
Based on a study of more than twenty thousand reports on drug experiences from the online drug education portal Erowid, this article argues that the integration of ethnographic methods with computational methods and digital data analysis, including so-called big data, is not only possible but highly rewarding. The analysis of ânativelyâ digital data from sites like Facebook, message boards, and web archives can offer glimpses into worlds of practice and meaning, introduce anthropologists to user-based semantics, provide greater context, help to re-evaluate hypotheses, facilitate access to difficult fields, and point to new research questions. This case study generated important insights into the social and political entanglements of drug consumption, drug phenomenology, and harm reduction. We argue here that deep ethnographic knowledge, what we term âfield groundednessâ, is indispensable for thoroughly making sense of the resulting visualizations, and we advocate for seeing ethnography and digital data analysis in a symbiotic relationship
UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository)
Abstract This study examines how experimentation with designer drugs is mediated by the Internet. We selected a popular drug forum that presents reports on self-experimentation with little or even completely unexplored designer drugs to examine: (1) how participants report their ''trying out'' of new compounds and (2) how participants reduce the pharmacological uncertainty associated with using these substances. Our methods included passive observation online, engaging more actively with the online community using an avatar, and off-line interviews with key interlocutors to validate our online findings. This article reflects on how forum participants experiment with designer drugs, their trust in suppliers and the testimonials of others, the use of ethno-scientific techniques that involve numerical weighing, ''allergy dosing,'' and the use of standardized trip reports. We suggest that these techniques contribute to a sense of control in the face of the possible toxicity of unknown or little-known designer drugs. The online reporting of effects allows users to experience not only the thrill of a new kind of high but also connection with others in the self-experimenting drug community
Cuidar: un concepto fluido para compromisos adaptables
 
Modernizing Frontier Chemical Transformations of Young Peopleâs Minds and Bodies in Puerto Princesa
Palawan is a land of promise, and of paradox.
On maps, it appears on the edge of the Philippines, isolated. Indeed,
it is a kind of last frontier. Its population remained tiny for centuries,
the government offering homestead land in the 1950s practically for
free to attract migrants from outside. The Palawan State University was
established by law in 1965, but did not become operational until 1972.
A commercial airport did not exist until the 1980s, and for many years,
flights were limited.
Yet Palawan is one of the oldest sites of human habitation in the
Philippines with the famous Tabon Cave human fossils. The oldest bone
fragment here has been dated to be about 47,000 years. We know, too,
that trade with China goes back several centuries.
Today, Palawan seems to be making up for lost time with new commercial
investments pouring in at breakneck speed. In particular, outsiders have
rediscovered its potentials around logging, mining, fisheries, and tourism.
This has caused concern among individuals and civil society organizations
who want sustainable development, and see the commercial developments
mainly as extractive, not just of natural resources but of the human.
Thereâs very cheap labor available. And when potential investors marvel
about cheap land, theyâre actually talking about displacing earlier settlers,
including indigenous people, from their lands.
A subtle but still insidious aspect of the exploitation of human resources
is a transformation of the very concept of human development. Using
the rhetoric of modernity, residents in Palawan are reorienting the way
they view themselves as well as their families and friends. The value of a
human being now hinges on how they look, and the desired appearance
is defined from the outside, as we see in this anthology of research reports
coming from the Chemical Youth project of the University of Amsterdam
and the University of the Philippines Diliman.
We read about the importance of fair skin as a projection of cleanliness,
of high social status (meaning someone not engaged in manual labor
and therefore not exposed to the sun). We read of how âfemininityâ is
defined around body contours, and cosmetics, and how hormones are
used by male-to-female transgenders. We go beyond the visual, reading
about the importance of controlling or enhancing body odors among
tour guides, who interestingly are especially concerned about the bad
odor management of their foreign customers, using car perfumes to keep
their work manageable and we learn how difficult it is for security guards
to stay alert during their long shifts. Energy drinks and cigarettes help
them perform their duties.
All these transformations through what the French philosopher and
historian Michel Foucault has called âtechnologies of the selfâ are
as paradoxical as Palawan. On the surface, the productsâwhich are
technologiesâseem to be mainly in the realm of the self but are, in
reality, pushed, through marketing, from the outside, in contexts of
inequality and exploitative labour relations. Personal aspirations are not
personal but are for predefined standards of modernity, related to work-related demands and expectations. The self must be made presentable to
the tourist, to the customers in malls, and to those who may threaten the
properties that young people protect.
It is not surprising that these transformations become problematic for
the âself.â The skin whiteners, the hormones, the body deodorants, and
the energy drinks are expensive and can distort budgetary priorities. The
money for tonic drinks, for example, could well go into more nutritious
food.
The tragedy, too, many of the products used are of doubtful safety and
efficacy. Even the energy drinks have much too high levels of caffeine that
can cause cardiac palpitations. Cosmetics and the skin whiteners imported
from China and unregistered with the Food and Drug Administration
may contain toxic chemicals like mercury. But even registered skin
whiteners can be problematic, their so-called âskin-whitening effectâ
coming about because they take away the upper layers of the skin, leaving
behind a red glow (seen as âwhiteningâ) which is actually inflammation.
The whitened skin fails to protect against the sun, leading to adverse
effects such as black spots.
Ultimately though, the problems come with the very definition of the
self. As the reports show, young people use the chemicals with some
ambivalence, knowing how expensive they are and experiencing some
of the undesirable side effects. There is, too, doubt about whether what
theyâre doing is indeed âgood,â captured by how IP women will put on
cosmetics only when theyâre away from home and about to go to work.
The cosmetics have to be removed before they return home because they
are not socially acceptable.
The research reports are not for Palawan alone. It must make us
more critical and discerning as we revisit concepts of development
and exploitation, modernity and tradition, self and community. The
chemicals, in many ways, are like the products used in precolonial barter
trade. For the Chinese, the beeswax and the sea cucumbers, for the
inhabitants of Palawan the ceramics, represented faraway lands. To have
those products gave prestige.
Today, the skin whiteners and tonic drinks and other chemicals described
in this anthology represent modernity with promises of not just of a more
attractive self, but of better jobs, a better life.
We are proud to have worked with the Palawan State University, and
the people of Palawan, to gather powerful narratives that will now challenge the outside, the purveyors of modernity, to be more critical
and discerning, the chemicals now to be seen not just as stuff applied to
the biological body, but as powerful shapers of social bodies
Barriers to access prevention of mother-to-child transmission for HIV positive women in a well-resourced setting in Vietnam
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>According to Vietnamese policy, HIV-infected women should have access at least to HIV testing and Nevirapine prophylaxis, or where available, to adequate counselling, HIV infection staging, ARV prophylaxis, and infant formula. Many studies in high HIV prevalence settings have reported low coverage of PMTCT services, but there have been few reports from low HIV prevalence settings, such as Asian countries. We investigated the access of HIV-infected pregnant women to PMTCT services in the well-resourced setting of the capital city, Hanoi.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Fifty-two HIV positive women enrolled in a self-help group in Hanoi were consulted, through in-depth interviews and bi-weekly meetings, about their experiences in accessing PMTCT services.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Only 44% and 20% of the women had received minimal and comprehensive PMTCT services, respectively. Nine women did not receive any services. Twenty-two women received no counselling. The women reported being limited by lack of knowledge and information due to poor counselling, gaps in PMTCT services, and fear of stigma and discrimination. HIV testing was done too late for optimal interventions and poor quality of care by health staff was frequently mentioned.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In a setting where PMTCT is available, HIV-infected women and children did not receive adequate care because of barriers to accessing those services. The results suggest key improvements would be improving quality of counselling and making PMTCT guidelines available to health services. Women should receive early HIV testing with adequate counselling, safe care and prophylaxis in a positive atmosphere towards HIV-infected women.</p
Social and cultural efficacies of medicines: Complications for antiretroviral therapy
Using ethnographic examples of medicine use, prescription, distribution and production, the authors argue that social and cultural effects of pharmaceuticals should be taken into account. Non-medical effects deeply influence the medical outcome of medicine use. Complications around the advent of anti-AIDS medicines in poor countries are taken as a point in case. The authors are medical anthropologists specialised in the social and cultural analysis of pharmaceuticals
Alternative medicines for AIDS in resource-poor settings: Insights from exploratory anthropological studies in Asia and Africa
The emergence of alternative medicines for AIDS in Asia and Africa was discussed at a satellite symposium and the parallel session on alternative and traditional treatments of the AIDSImpact meeting, held in Marseille, in July 2007. These medicines are heterogeneous, both in their presentation and in their geographic and cultural origin. The sessions focused on the role of these medications in selected resource poor settings in Africa and Asia now that access to anti-retroviral therapy is increasing. The aims of the sessions were to (1) identify the actors involved in the diffusion of these alternative medicines for HIV/AIDS, (2) explore uses and forms, and the way these medicines are given legitimacy, (3) reflect on underlying processes of globalisation and cultural differentiation, and (4) define priority questions for future research in this area. This article presents the insights generated at the meeting, illustrated with some findings from the case studies (Uganda, Senegal, Benin, Burkina Faso, China and Indonesia) that were presented. These case studies reveal the wide range of actors who are involved in the marketing and supply of alternative medicines. Regulatory mechanisms are weak. The efficacy claims of alternative medicines often reinforce a biomedical paradigm for HIV/AIDS, and fit with a healthy living ideology promoted by AIDS care programs and support groups. The AIDSImpact session concluded that more interdisciplinary research is needed on the experience of people living with HIV/AIDS with these alternative medicines, and on the ways in which these products interact (or not) with anti-retroviral therapy at pharmacological as well as psychosocial levels
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