The governance of female drug users : : women's experiences of drug policy / / Natasha Du Rose.

• VerfasserIn: Du Rose, Natasha,
• Place / Publishing House: Bristol, UK : : Policy Press,, 2015.
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (v, 350 pages) :; digital, PDF file(s).
• Notes: Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 10 Mar 2022).

Challenging popular misconceptions of female users, this book is the first to examine how female drug user's identities, and hence their experiences, are shaped by drug policies.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements; About the author; Introduction; Governing mentalities; Expertise ; Technologies of power ; A feminist sociological perspective ; A comparative approach; Outline of the book; Part One ; 1. Research context; Baby vessels and bad mothers; Psychopathological and emotionally disturbed women; Polluted and polluting women ; Passive dependents or emancipated lawbreakers? ; Rational agents ; 2. Political context ; History of prohibition; Punitive regulation; Neoliberalism, freedom and disordered production
• The neoliberal welfare state, risk and responsibilityPart Two; Drug use as a medical-moral-legal hybrid; Drug policy discourse ; 3. Prohibition; Construction of the problem for government: protecting families, young people and communities; Unprecedented increase in the female prison population; Locking up the 'dangerous underclass'; Protection of young people and families through the incarceration of 'unfit' mothers: the impact on children; Irresponsible, unfit mothers: the criminalisation of pregnancy; Dangerous criminals and unrecognised victims ; Conclusion; 4. Medicalisation
• Medicalisation of drug use and mutually reinforcing technologiesSocial control of pathological users ; Harm minimisation and the responsibilisation of dependent users ; Harm reduction, HIV/AIDS and female drug users; Harm reduction as social control: 'state-sponsored' dependent women; Recoverable, changeable, transformable women; Responsible and needy women ; A low priority, but requiring coercion; Conclusion ; 5. Welfarisation; Undeserving addicts; Denial of social services in the US; 'Benefit scroungers' in the UK; Benefit conditions in Canada; Welfarisation of drug-using mothers
• Conclusion Part Three ; Technologies of the self; Ascription of characteristics; Normalisation; Responsibilisation; 6. Psychosocial accounts; A short-term solution; Contradictory characteristics; Irresponsible, disordered choice makers; Chemically enslaved addicts ; Dangerous, immoral, criminals, worthy of punishment; Irresponsible, unfit mothers ; Recoverable, programmable, changeable and transformable; Conclusion ; 7. Social stories ; Introduction ; Unrecognised pain; Rational, adaptive, caring, resourceful women; Victims of policy: criminals versus victims
• Disciplined, normalised and punished mothersSaveable, changeable, programmable and recoverable; Conclusion ; Conclusion; Appendix: Research methods; Bibliography; Index