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Methadone Maintenance Treatment and Making Up People

University of New South Wales, k.valentine{at}unsw.edu.au

This ar ticle considers the operations of methadone maintenance treatment through the use of concepts proposed by actor-network theor y and historical ontology. The former provokes a concern with the co-constitution of treatment regimes by various actors, including non-human actants.The latter provokes a concern with the creation of new identities. Analysis of methadone often examines treatment as a nether world, and clients as neither addicted nor autonomous.The analysis under taken here instead emphasizes what is produced in methadone maintenance treatment, rather than the inexactness of existing categories. It considers four identities produced through methadone treatment: the dissatisfied customer ; the stable user ; the individual in need of guidance; and the lay carer. This analysis enables a study of what and who is produced through treatment in terms that problematize simple distinctions between good and bad, addicted and independent, stable and chaotic.

Key Words: actor-network theory • addiction • biological citizenship • Ian Hacking • methadone

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