Drug treatment in contemporary anthropology and sociology

The relatively slim social science literature on drug treatment is reviewed. Attention is paid to the institutionalization of treatment at the meso (local community or clinic) level and the micro (client) level rather than to the more commonly examined macro (societal or national) level. The inter-penetration across these levels of ideologies and practices around drugs is revealed through discussion of the targeting of certain populations for treatment, methods of client control in treatment settings, and the client's view of treatment. In the literature, drug users are often presented as passive individuals, subject to various forms of restrictive social control in therapeutic settings. Their perspective on the processes or efficacy of treatment is rarely sought. The concept of drug treatment as necessarily beneficial to clients is questioned in this paper.