Assigning, advocating, addicting: Law, drugs and STS

• In Event: Investigating drug transformations through an ontopolitical lens

Abstract

Alcohol and other drug studies have undergone an ‘ontological turn’ in recent years, inspired by ideas from Science and Technology Studies (STS). Separately, through the work of scholars such as Bruno Latour and Kyle McGee there has been an increasing interest in the use of STS concepts to study the law (or ‘assignation’, as Latour now prefers). Despite growing interest in the application of STS to the study of alcohol and other drug ‘addiction’, and to the study of law, there has been little work that brings these two literatures into conversation. This paper attempts to do so, through considering how STS insights about the instability, complexity, fragility and multiplicity of objects such as ‘drugs’ and ‘addiction’ might be mobilised in legal practice. I consider what STS means for drug law, especially where law and legal practice proceeds on the basis that legal ‘facts’ and ‘truths’ exist prior to legal intervention, or are ‘discovered’ – rather than made – through legal processes. I draw on data collected in Australia and Canada for a research project on addiction in the law, including statutes and case law, and interviews with lawyers and judges. I argue that STS insights challenge assumptions about ‘facts’ and ‘truths’ in law, including concepts and claims frequently made about the agency and properties of drugs and of addiction. I explore what this ‘ontopolitically-oriented’ approach to legal practice might mean for drug law and law reform, and consider how it might inform and inspire lawyers to advocate in radically different ways.

Author

• Kate Seear, Monash University