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Article ID: CBB667125425

Translating Guān’ài in the People’s War on Drugs: Enacting Relations of Care in China’s State-Run Methadone Maintenance Treatment Program (March 2020)

Chaoxiong Zhang (Author)
Priscilla Song (Author)

East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
Volume: 14
Issue: 1
Pages: 85-108

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/18752160-8233958

URI: https://read.dukeupress.edu/easts/article-abstract/14/1/85/148620/Translating-Guan-ai-in-the-People-s-War-on-Drugs?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Publication Date: March 2020
Edition Details: Special issue: Care in Translation: Care-ful Research in Medical Settings
Language: English

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Peer review Anthropology Addictive behavior Medicine Ethnography Health care Technoscience; science and technology studies Anthropology 21st century China

China’s state-run methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) program was launched in 2003 in response to the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic and increasing criticism of compulsory rehabilitation centers. In conjunction with providing methadone replacement therapy, the Chinese state began promoting a politicized discourse of guān’ài 关爱 (care and love) as a more effective and humane method for dealing with drug users. While the medicalization of addiction as a chronic brain disease requiring long-term pharmaceutical treatment marked a watershed moment in the debate over drug control in China, the affective recasting of addiction as a social condition worthy of care is potentially even more revolutionary. But to what extent has this project transformed Chinese drug users into a legitimate target of (state) care? Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Yunnan province from 2013 to 2019, we examine how various stakeholders in China’s MMT program (including methadone recipients, clinicians, public health officials, police officers, and the general public) have attempted to translate the discourse of guān’ài into workable practices and relationships based on divergent understandings of how to care for and about Chinese drug users. Our analysis shows how attending to the everyday dynamics of guān’ài in the People’s War on Drugs provides a novel approach to theorizing the fraught politics of care.

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Article Catelijne Coopmans; Karen M. McNamara (March 2020) Care in Translation: Care-ful Research in Medical Settings. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (pp. 1-14). unapi

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