(Bio)politics, Knowledge and Borders in Global Drug Policy
Authors:
Ondrej Ditrych, and Constanza Sánchez Avilés.
Book:
Governing Human Life
Year:
2023
About the book
The book delves into the intersection of biopolitics and global drug policy. It uses the lens of continental social theory to critically examine the existing drug control regimes. The authors aim to provide an empirically detailed analysis and focus on how these policies intersect with issues like democracy, authoritarianism, the role of scientific evidence, and the effects on communities.
The authors explore how drug control policies often lead to states of exception that are in tension with democratic principles. They use the Czech Republic as a case study to illustrate the evolution of drug policy and its relation to democracy and authoritarianism. Moreover, the book questions what counts as legitimate “knowledge” in the formulation of drug policies. It argues that so-called “evidence-based” approaches often perpetuate coercive and punitive measures rather than challenging them.
The book serves as a comprehensive critique of global drug control regimes, using continental social theory to expose the inherent biases and power dynamics. It calls for a more nuanced understanding of these policies, emphasizing the need for alternative approaches that are rooted in evidence, social justice, and democratic principles.
Abstract
This book is a critical analysis tracing the operation of biopolitical mode of power in the global field of drug control. Through a series of theoretically framed investigations that relate current drug control policies to the broader frame of ‘vital politics’, it attends to the relationship of drug control, state of exception and democracy, exploring how pressures of resurgent sovereignty and neoliberal governmentality imprint on drug policy. Then, it turns attention to the relationship of power and knowledge, with a particular focus on the ‘evidence-based’ approaches that may at times sustain rather than challenge prohibitionist drug control policies. Finally, it looks at how the global drug control dispositif shapes life on one of Europe’s (internal) peripheries. These investigations are intended to illuminate the operation of the drug control dispositif and its far reaching (bio-)political effects in order to expand the space for devising more competent and compassionate public policies.
Photo by Marco Verch on Flickr.
Categories:
Studies & papers
, Drug policies
Tags:
prohibition
, biopolitics
, scientific research
, study
, drug policy
, global