Governing Habits: Treating Alcoholism in the Post-Soviet Clinic

Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge

by Eugene Raikhel

Critics of narcology—as addiction medicine is called in Russia—decry it as being "backward," hopelessly behind contemporary global medical practices in relation to addiction and substance abuse, and assume that its practitioners lack both professionalism and expertise. On the basis of his research in a range of clinical institutions managing substance abuse in St. Petersburg, Eugene Raikhel increasingly came to understand that these assumptions and critiques obscured more than they revealed. Governing Habits is an ethnography of extraordinary sensitivity and awareness that shows how therapeutic practice and expertise is expressed in the highly specific, yet rapidly transforming milieu of hospitals, clinics, and rehabilitation centers in post­-Soviet Russia. Rather than interpreting narcology as a Soviet survival or a local clinical world on the wane in the face of globalizing evidence-based medicine, Raikhel examines the transformation of the medical management of alcoholism in Russia over the past twenty years.

Raikhel's book is more than a story about the treatment of alcoholism. It is also a gripping analysis of the many cultural, institutional, political, and social transformations taking place in the post­-Soviet world, particularly in Putin's Russia. Governing Habits will appeal to a wide range of readers, from medical anthropologists, clinicians, to scholars of post-Soviet Russia, to students of institutions and organizational change, to those interested in therapies and treatments of substance abuse, addiction, and alcoholism.

Genres: Medical, Health

246 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 19, 2016

About the author

Eugene Raikhel is Assistant Professor of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago.

Reviews

[Martyn Beeny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Governing Habits: Treating Alcoholism in the Post Soviet Clinic is a compelling and nuanced ethnographic study of addiction medicine and healthcare in post Soviet Russia. Eugene Raikhel skillfully combines anthropological research with cultural, institutional, and political analysis to illuminate the evolving practice of treating alcoholism within a rapidly changing medical landscape.

Insightful and deeply researched, the book offers valuable perspectives on addiction, clinical expertise, and social transformation. It is essential reading for medical anthropologists, clinicians, historians, and scholars of Russian and post-Soviet studies.