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 ... Read morebrave 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
Show Less