Theodoropoulou, Eleni 
ORCID: 0000-0002-4328-6825
(2020)
Practices of care in the recovery assemblage: an empirical study of drug services in Liverpool and Athens.
PhD thesis, University of Liverpool.
|
Text
201031195_Jan2020.pdf.pdf - Unspecified Download (3MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Practices of care in the recovery assemblage: an empirical study of drug services in Liverpool and Athens Author: Eleni Theodoropoulou This thesis empirically explores the practices of care emerging in two drug recovery services: Genie in the Gutter (Liverpool) and 18 ano (Athens). Thinking with the Deleuzo-Guattarian assemblage, I follow the flows of the service-users’ desires, from their initial encounter with substances to the transformations enabled through their encounter with the recovery assemblage. Throughout this complex and non-linear narrative, the focus is not on the consumption of substances, nor on abstention, but on the body’s desire to increase its power of acting, and accordingly on the encounters and connections that enhance or block the flow of this desire. Following this line of thought, I argue that it is not the lack of the substance that holds the recovery assemblage together, but the production of connections that enhance a body’s power of acting. Therefore, recovery becomes a practice of collective care, entangled with a body’s capacity to affect and be affected. The oral (interviews) and visual (photovoice) methods deployed are connection-building devices, specifically producing, enhancing and accounting for the connection built between the two fieldsites, between the researcher and the services, and the researcher and the service-users. The data produced drive the unpacking of the human and nonhuman encounters that constitute the recovery assemblage in all its complexity. Overall, the aim of this thesis is to methodologically and empirically demonstrate that policy can be practised otherwise. The outcome of the analysis of the lived experiences of the service-users is a call for the dismissal of policy as an intervention coming from outside, and its reconstitution as a practice, emerging organically through the affective relations produced inside the recovery assemblage. I argue that the practices of care unfolded in this account are policy in practice. Furthermore, by closely attending to the affective relationships produced in the recovery assemblage, we can enhance our understanding of drug using realities, of the desires invested in drug use and recovery, and of the ways in which societies fail those whose desires clash with established systems of thought. Finally, this thesis contributes to the sociology of health and illness by expanding the body of work that mobilises Deleuze to empirically challenge wellbeing as a stable state and individual matter.
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) |
|---|---|
| Divisions: | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Law and Social Justice |
| Depositing User: | Symplectic Admin |
| Date Deposited: | 08 Jun 2020 10:28 |
| Last Modified: | 18 Jan 2023 23:55 |
| DOI: | 10.17638/03082270 |
| Supervisors: |
|
| URI: | https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3082270 |
Dimensions
Dimensions
