Processes, practices and politics in the treatment centers for addictions and problematic consumptions: an analysis of the perspectives and practices of the professionals in a treatment center in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires
Contextual Information: Historically in Argentina, as well as globally, the politics regarding the use of “drugs” have been prohibitionist and treatment centers have implemented these politics with models of abstinence. More recently, the need for both the politics and the treatment to prioritize the rights and health of the drug uses has become more widely recognized in both social and political contexts, as much as among professionals in treatment centers. New laws have been passed proposing the implementation of harm reduction strategies in the treatment of addictions and problematic drug use. In the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires there are several distinct types of treatment centers that differ in both their practices and their ideologies. One of these treatment centers is the Center Xavier*. The Center Xavier is a center of low threshold requirement that offers outpatient treatment. This study analyzes the type treatment offered by the public health system through the Xavier Centre, to provide care for drug users; and the changes that these new policies aimed at addressing the problem of problematic drug use may have generated in this center and others. Methodology: The research objectives were met through 8 in-depth interviews with 9 total individuals. One investigator not associated with the Center Xavier was interviewed; the interviewees at the Xavier Center included: the head of the center (also a psychiatrist), five psychologists, a gynecologist, and the secretary. The results were coded into 7 categories for analysis. Results: The Xavier Center implements strategies from the perspective of harm reduction and the treatment realized there is based in psychoanalysis. In general their work is limited by the resources they have. In this particular center there have not been many changes in response to the new laws, in part because the center was already complying with these laws before they were approved. While there is a stronger movement away from the prohibitionist policies, these policies and the contradictions that they create, still remain and cause many problems. *Fake names are used in order to maintain confidentiality
Técnicas terapéuticas y subjetivación en tratamientos con usuarios/as de drogas
The internment process in therapeutic communities (TC) involves a multiplicity of therapeutic practices and strategies geared to abstinence from drug usage. According to the specialists' own regulations and explicit objectives, the residents must not only abandon the consumption of substances but also adopt new practices, attitudes, emotions and significances through the use of therapeutic techniques that allow them to adapt to the structure of the organization that these institutions impose. Based on the results of the ethnographic survey carried out between 2009 and 2010 in three TCs of the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, Argentina, the scope of this article is to analyze from a sociological and anthropological standpoint the "therapeutic tools" that comprise the treatment, the subject models that underlie these tools, the consequences that they may produce and their participation in the subjectivity production processes. For this purpose, we focus on analysis of "confrontation" as a privileged and omnipresent strategy of subjectivation in these therapeutic contexts, in order to reveal the epistemological, economic, political and ethical dimensions in the de-subjectivation process of the institutionalized drug user.
Arab Uprisings and the Outstanding Return to Democracy: Tunisia as a Model
In the wake of the Middle Eastern crises, the Tunisian case in focus has been doted as a unique phenomenon being that it was the Genesis of the revolution that ultimately spread across the Middle East like wild fire, but has eventually heralded a new dawn as democracy has incidentally returned to the Empire. This literature therefore looks closely at the extent to which the ‘DignityRevolution’ has been instrumental in the Middle East uprisings, which have brought an end to dynastic autocracies. The literature zeros in on the Tunisian uprising which has attracted global concerns, sympathy and has sparked interests in the international arena. The literature finds that the people hold colossal prospect in the uprising and its resultant effect, as it paved the way for the revolutionist to generate, gather and disseminate information on the condition of the entire region to the international community. The people in this context were of utmost importance and played a very crucial role in the creation of awareness, mobilization of protesters and utmost determining the direction of the uprising and also ensuring a speedy return to democratic rule. The paper submits that the role of the people in ensuring that the ruins of the uprising is not left littering around and democracy restored is highly commendable and should be a model for all other Arab countries involved in the revolution.