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Governing Habits: Treating Alcoholism in the Post-Soviet Clinic
Eugene Raikhel
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Description for Governing Habits: Treating Alcoholism in the Post-Soviet Clinic
Paperback. Series: Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge. Num Pages: 248 pages, black & white illustrations. BIC Classification: 1DVUA; JFFH1; MMZR. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 155 x 237 x 19. Weight in Grams: 384.
Critics of narcology-as addiction medicine is called in Russia-decry it as being backward, hopelessly behind contemporary global medical practices in relation to addiction and substance abuse, and assume that its practitioners lack both professionalism and expertise. On the basis of his research in a range of clinical institutions managing substance abuse in St. Petersburg, Eugene Raikhel increasingly came to understand that these assumptions and critiques obscured more than they revealed. Governing Habits is an ethnography of extraordinary sensitivity and awareness that shows how therapeutic practice and expertise is expressed in the highly specific, yet rapidly transforming milieu of hospitals, clinics, and rehabilitation centers in post-Soviet Russia. Rather than interpreting narcology as a Soviet survival or a local clinical world on the wane in the face of globalizing evidence-based medicine, Raikhel examines the transformation of the medical management of alcoholism in Russia over the past twenty years.Raikhel's book is more than a story about the treatment of alcoholism. It is also a gripping analysis of the many cultural, institutional, political, and social transformations taking place in the post-Soviet world, particularly in Putin's Russia. Governing Habits will appeal to a wide range of readers, from medical anthropologists, clinicians, to scholars of post-Soviet Russia, to students of institutions and organizational change, to those interested in therapies and treatments of substance abuse, addiction, and alcoholism.
Product Details
Publisher
Cornell University Press
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2016
Series
Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge
Condition
New
Number of Pages
248
Place of Publication
Ithaca, United States
ISBN
9781501703133
SKU
V9781501703133
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1
About Eugene Raikhel
Eugene Raikhel is Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. He is coeditor of Addiction Trajectories as well as founder and editor of Somatosphere, an online forum for medical anthropology.
Reviews for Governing Habits: Treating Alcoholism in the Post-Soviet Clinic
With vivid portrayals of how clinicians harness broad social forces in the quest for patient sobriety, Governing Habits engages foundational questions at the unruly nexus of clinical authority and legitimate care. The story of the social crafting of medical efficacy now has a new, groundbreaking account.
Adriana Petryna, author of Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl This brave book presents new material and interpretation of the treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction in post-Soviet Russia. Governing Habits will set the stage for new conversations about the cultural specificity of medicine and biomedicalization, as well as concepts of alcoholism and addiction that begin to open new avenues for thinking beyond the currently dominant paradigm of brain-based disorder. This is the best that medical anthropology can provide-a deeply historicized and richly contextualized account of the meaning, value, and significance of present practice.
Nancy D. Campbell, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, co-author of Gendering Addiction: The Politics of Drug Treatment in a Neurochemical World Calling narcology a 'domain of knowledge, ethics, and intervention,' Eugene Raikhel raises a series of fascinating and significant questions regarding the place of truth and ethics, responsibility, personal autonomy, beneficence, and obligation in the processes that compose this domain.
Michele Rivkin-Fish, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, author of Women's Health in Post-Soviet Russia: the Politics of Intervention Raikhel has written a fine book that places Russia's treatment of alcohol use disorder in historical context, from nineteenth century Tsarist Russia, through the Soviet era, to the present postSoviet times....Governing Habits is one of the few books written by an anthropologist that details therapeutic interventions from the point of view of both physicians and patients within the larger economic, social, and cultural context.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
Highly nuanced and innovative.... It is on the topic of efficacy and clinical practice that Raikhel makes his most original contribution. The author offers a nuanced and ultimately sympathetic take on the state of contemporary Soviet narcology.... Governing Habits offers a highly convincing defense of the principled refusal of its author to take familiar, sweeping positions and instead focus on the fascinating particularities of the post-Soviet narcological practices and epistemological commitments.... Governing Habits makes an important contribution to the anthropology of medicine through its vivid exploration of a history of medicalization that radically diverge from the 'two minds' of American psychiatry (Luhrmann 2001) and, by extension, the practice of addiction medicine in North America.
PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review
An important contribution to the medical anthropology of therapeutic institutions and practices, offering new insights on the cultural specificity of biomedical and lay therapies of addiction. In Raikhel's careful account, authority, knowledge, and subjectivity are mutually transformed in the post-Soviet context. The book should be of broad use to those interested in the areas of post-Soviet healthcare, global health, and substance abuse treatment. It is also a vital contribution to the anthropology of medicine, psychiatry, addiction, institutions, and expertise.
Slavic Review
Adriana Petryna, author of Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl This brave book presents new material and interpretation of the treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction in post-Soviet Russia. Governing Habits will set the stage for new conversations about the cultural specificity of medicine and biomedicalization, as well as concepts of alcoholism and addiction that begin to open new avenues for thinking beyond the currently dominant paradigm of brain-based disorder. This is the best that medical anthropology can provide-a deeply historicized and richly contextualized account of the meaning, value, and significance of present practice.
Nancy D. Campbell, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, co-author of Gendering Addiction: The Politics of Drug Treatment in a Neurochemical World Calling narcology a 'domain of knowledge, ethics, and intervention,' Eugene Raikhel raises a series of fascinating and significant questions regarding the place of truth and ethics, responsibility, personal autonomy, beneficence, and obligation in the processes that compose this domain.
Michele Rivkin-Fish, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, author of Women's Health in Post-Soviet Russia: the Politics of Intervention Raikhel has written a fine book that places Russia's treatment of alcohol use disorder in historical context, from nineteenth century Tsarist Russia, through the Soviet era, to the present postSoviet times....Governing Habits is one of the few books written by an anthropologist that details therapeutic interventions from the point of view of both physicians and patients within the larger economic, social, and cultural context.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
Highly nuanced and innovative.... It is on the topic of efficacy and clinical practice that Raikhel makes his most original contribution. The author offers a nuanced and ultimately sympathetic take on the state of contemporary Soviet narcology.... Governing Habits offers a highly convincing defense of the principled refusal of its author to take familiar, sweeping positions and instead focus on the fascinating particularities of the post-Soviet narcological practices and epistemological commitments.... Governing Habits makes an important contribution to the anthropology of medicine through its vivid exploration of a history of medicalization that radically diverge from the 'two minds' of American psychiatry (Luhrmann 2001) and, by extension, the practice of addiction medicine in North America.
PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review
An important contribution to the medical anthropology of therapeutic institutions and practices, offering new insights on the cultural specificity of biomedical and lay therapies of addiction. In Raikhel's careful account, authority, knowledge, and subjectivity are mutually transformed in the post-Soviet context. The book should be of broad use to those interested in the areas of post-Soviet healthcare, global health, and substance abuse treatment. It is also a vital contribution to the anthropology of medicine, psychiatry, addiction, institutions, and expertise.
Slavic Review