Maxfield Waterman
Grant Type
Dissertation Fieldwork GrantInstitutional Affiliation
California, Berkeley, U. ofGrant number
Gr. 9482Approve Date
April 25, 2017Project Title
Waterman, Maxfield A., U. of California, Berkeley, CA - To aid research on 'The Therapeutic Void: Addiction, Substitution, and the Timescapes of Precarity,' supervised by Dr. Lawrence CohenPreliminary abstract: This project investigates publicly funded therapeutic interventions into illicit drug use in the United Kingdom. Using ethnographic methods to observe the therapeutic process that drug users receiving opioid substitute medications undergo in the broader context of community substance misuse services, I ask how this form of governmental care apprehends clients as precarious subjects – that is, as subjects defined by their openness to contingency – and how the process of treatment itself emerges as a precarious temporality encompassing clients, workers, and care-giving institutions.