I DEN GODE SAGS TJENESTE? Om antropologi, stofbrugere og lodrette forbindelser

Abstract

A point of departure is taken in a study of

drug users’ experiences with methadone

treatment at four municipal institutions in

Copenhagen and, more particularly, in the

reactions to the study report within the Social

Services Department that commissioned the

study. Scepticism towards the report did not

concern the harsh criticisms which users

expressed, but the anthropologist’s attempt to

relate problems of treatment to a systematic

ambivalence about the therapeutic use of

methadone found in the attitudes of treatment

staff, administrators, local politicians, and

national health authorities. The description

of such vertical connections was considered

“irrelevant”. This point is taken into a broader

discussion of the position of ethnography in

policy studies and applied anthropology, in

terms of the local “politics of knowledge”

that each ethnographic study is part of. On

the one hand, applied anthropology must

involve social criticism to be worthwhile and

useful, on the other hand, more radical forms

of criticisms that incorporate a view of social

inequalities are not necessarily welcome.

This, of course, should be no surprise, it is

more problematic when social theory itself

seems to discourage such a broader view. An

article by Anthony Giddens about anthropological

theory is taken as an example of

the understanding that in order to inform and

improve policies, ethnography should adhere

to the production of knowledge about social

groups. Against this approach it is argued

that such knowledge does not guarantee good

policy in the eyes of the target groups. Rather

on the contrary: know-ledge about them is

equally a part of the conditions of possibility

of policing and control. On this background,

a critique is raised of the claims made in

ethnographies of drug users that they provide

more positive representations of this social

group: Ethnographies of drug users also help

maintain the view that it is indeed the users

who are in need of scrutiny, rather than the

social and political conditions – the vertical

connections – that shape their conditions of

life. Finally, it is argued that the engagement

of anthropologists in social critique and

action should be seen as a consequence of

their practical involvement in and knowledge

of people’s lives, rather than stemming

from any particular normative position within

anthropology as an academic discipline.