TY - JOUR
T1 - Becoming with Care in Drug Treatment Services: The Recovery Assemblage
T2 - by Lena Theodoropoulou, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2023, 216 pp., £120 (hbk), ISBN 978-0-367-76016-8
AU - Bathish, Ramez
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - Questions about how we might productively describe, think about and respond to people’s transition away from patterns of ill-health involving alcohol and other drug use, have animated a burgeoning body of critical recovery scholarship. This work has highlighted how recovery-oriented policy and research has drawn on responsibilizing notions of self-management and citizenship to govern people who use alcohol and other drugs (Fomiatti, Citation2020; Fomiatti et al., Citation2019). Recovery experiences and practices too have become a recent focus for critical recovery scholars who have sought to extend thinking about alcohol and other drug recovery using assemblage theory (Duff & Hill, Citation2022; Sultan, Citation2023; Theodoropoulou et al., Citation2022). Following in this vein, Becoming with Care seeks to reimagine and ‘reclaim recovery’ through a synthesis of Deleuzo-Guattarian assemblage theory, Foucauldian heterotoplogy and critical care scholarship. Theodoropolou grounds their analysis in a rich empirical study developed through interviews and fieldwork conducted at two services in Liverpool and Athens. Rather than framing alcohol and other drug use and recovery as bound up in pathology, the book recasts them in terms of desire; desire for connection, desire for care and a desire to live life in ways that enhance agency. To those not familiar with critical perspectives and continental philosophy, this work might be a somewhat challenging read, but for anyone interested in critical perspectives on alcohol and other drugs this book will no doubt be worthwhile.
AB - Questions about how we might productively describe, think about and respond to people’s transition away from patterns of ill-health involving alcohol and other drug use, have animated a burgeoning body of critical recovery scholarship. This work has highlighted how recovery-oriented policy and research has drawn on responsibilizing notions of self-management and citizenship to govern people who use alcohol and other drugs (Fomiatti, Citation2020; Fomiatti et al., Citation2019). Recovery experiences and practices too have become a recent focus for critical recovery scholars who have sought to extend thinking about alcohol and other drug recovery using assemblage theory (Duff & Hill, Citation2022; Sultan, Citation2023; Theodoropoulou et al., Citation2022). Following in this vein, Becoming with Care seeks to reimagine and ‘reclaim recovery’ through a synthesis of Deleuzo-Guattarian assemblage theory, Foucauldian heterotoplogy and critical care scholarship. Theodoropolou grounds their analysis in a rich empirical study developed through interviews and fieldwork conducted at two services in Liverpool and Athens. Rather than framing alcohol and other drug use and recovery as bound up in pathology, the book recasts them in terms of desire; desire for connection, desire for care and a desire to live life in ways that enhance agency. To those not familiar with critical perspectives and continental philosophy, this work might be a somewhat challenging read, but for anyone interested in critical perspectives on alcohol and other drugs this book will no doubt be worthwhile.
U2 - 10.1080/09687637.2023.2219516
DO - 10.1080/09687637.2023.2219516
M3 - Short Review
SN - 0968-7637
VL - 31
SP - 158
EP - 159
JO - Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy
JF - Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy
IS - 1
ER -