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- Roumeliotis, Filip, 1980-
(författare)
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Drug prevention, politics and knowledge : Ideology in the making
- 2014
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Ingår i: Addiction Research and Theory. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1606-6359 .- 1476-7392. ; 22:4, s. 336-347
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The quest for rational and effective methods for political action has long been at the forefront of Swedish drug policy and prevention. This article focuses on the ideological dimension of Swedish drug prevention policy during the years 1981–2011 by examining the knowledge utilisation in the construction of drugs as a political problem. Ten public reports have been analysed in terms of how drugs are constructed as problems in policy proposals, including an analysis of how knowledge is used in proposals for preventive measures. There was a marked shift in the 1990s in how the drug issue was constructed as a problem and what preventive measures should be taken. What used to be an issue of social exclusion that should be managed politically on a structural level now became a behavioural concern and a matter of liberal drug values. Values, then, were to be addressed by methods aimed at modifying individual behaviour. The analysis suggests that drug prevention today has been constructed in a way that precludes reading drugs as a problem of social exclusion. Drugs are constructed as a problem to be handled by experts rather than politics, which helps to circumvent demands for political accountability and the very possibility of constructing drugs as a political problem.
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- Roumeliotis, Filip, 1980-
(författare)
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Drug use and affective politics : The political implications of social emotional training
- 2016
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Ingår i: Contemporary Drug Problems. - : SAGE Publications. - 0091-4509 .- 2163-1808. ; 43:4, s. 331-349
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article examines how a Swedish program for social emotional learning establishes a relationship between the subject and emotions, and the political implications of this relationship. This includes an examination of how emotions fit with notions of “evidence-based policy” in the drug field. The key questions are: (1) How are emotions constituted in programs of social emotional training (SET)? (2) How is the subject and its relationship to emotions and social norms constituted in this program? (3) What are the political implications of the relationship between the subject and emotions? The article shows that the SET program seeks to instill in the subject the ability to identify and control emotions in order to become an emotionally mature subject. The program establishes a neurodisciplinary regime where the subject is to “re-wire” its synaptic links through repetition, decoupling emotions from their cultural context. Emotions are thus reified as internal entities arising from the central nervous system. The SET program constructs a social bond which demands adherence to specific social norms governing democratic participation. The subject is expected to control its emotions and engage in cooperation, negotiation, and conflict resolution within a model of democratic communication. Refusal or inability to adhere to the norms implicit in this model of communication risk relegating the subject to the sphere of the irrational, thereby disqualifying certain practices and responses from the sphere of the political. This is what happens to drug users, as drug use is constructed as an expression of irrationality. The SET program also pacifies individuals politically by turning issues such as drug use, unemployment, and education into matters of acquiring skills rather than political action.
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- Roumeliotis, Filip, 1980-
(författare)
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Drug use and the constitution of homo politicus in Swedish politics 1966–1979
- 2024
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Ingår i: International journal of drug policy. - 0955-3959 .- 1873-4758. ; 126, s. 104357-104357
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BackgroundThe emergence of the drug user as a political problem in Sweden during the 1960s presented politicians with the problem of how to fit this new character into the existing democratic order. The aim of this article is to examine how Swedish politics sought to regulate democratic participation by establishing norms that conditioned who is recognized as a political subject as well as what counts as political speech and action.MethodsThe analysis is based on a close reading of parliamentary debates, political motions, and public reports and covers the period 1966–1979.ResultsDuring the examined period, Swedish politics constituted the ideal subject of democratic politics, homo politicus, as a subject embedded in a community of active and politically conscious citizens endowed with the capacity to cooperate and engage in the collective formulation of the common good. Drug use therefore posed a threat to the democratic order due to its passivizing effects that inhibited the cooperation needed to uphold the democratic polity.ConclusionThe perceived individualism, passivity, and inability of the drug user to engage in cooperation within a politically conscious community of citizens positioned the drug user as a threat to the democratic order. The drug user thereby became a useful figure in the political regulation of the democratic sphere and the constitution of homo politicus, the ideal subject of democratic politics.
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- Roumeliotis, Filip, 1980-
(författare)
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Empowered Communities : Science, Ideology and the Limits of Political Action
- 2016
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Ingår i: Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. - : SAGE Publications. - 1458-6126. ; 33:4, s. 343-359
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- AIMS: Against the background of an increased interest in community participation in political processes, the aim of this article is to critically examine how the “community” is constituted as a political entity in the Communities That Care drug prevention program.METHOD: Through an examination of 13 publications written by the program developers of the program and other collaborators, I have analyzed the program’s theoretical foundation.RESULTS: The program seeks to constitute the community as an expert community, drawing on the principles of prevention science in its decision making processes and thereby asserting the primacy of scientific reasoning in politics. Disagreement, otherwise regarded as the “essence” of democratic politics, is to be neutralized through the establishment of a common language based on prevention science. The program constitutes needs as existing independently of any culturally and politically informed interpretations and readily met by ready-tested, evidence-based interventions. By combining a consumer subject and an instrumental-rational subject, the program establishes a specific kind of democratic subject, expected to exert its choices on a market offering ready-made solutions to problems formulated outside of the community’s decision making processes.CONCLUSION: The analysis points to a range of limitations and issues regarding how community empowerment and democratic participation are conceptualized in the program. By asserting the primacy of scientific reasoning in drug policy processes, the program sets limits to what counts as a political problem and which responses are deemed legitimate. This risks exerting significant closure on the ability of communities to speak in properly political terms.
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- Roumeliotis, Filip, et al.
(författare)
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From Mothers of the “People's Home” to Biologically Rational Consumers : A press analysis of changing conceptions of women’s drinking in Sweden from 1955 to 2010
- 2014
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Ingår i: Feminist Media Studies. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1468-0777 .- 1471-5902. ; 14:3, s. 452-469
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim of the present article is to study how women's alcohol consumption has been defined and contested in the Swedish press from 1955 to 2010 in relation to the development of Swedish society from a social democratic welfare state to a neoliberal competition state. Our material consists of articles published in the largest Swedish national and regional newspapers in 1955, 1965, 1977, 1982, 1995, 2004, and 2010. In the study, we apply Fraser's concepts of recognition and redistribution to analyse how the press contributed to the formation of cultural injustices and counter-claims through its recognition of women's drinking, and how these cultural injustices and counter-claims have conditioned the redistribution of societal resources. Our analysis shows that, during the study period, women were recognized in the Swedish press in limited and stigmatizing subject positions. These dominating representations of drinking women changed over time in an unpredictable way. As collectively shared, widely accepted cultural images, they tended to downplay the possibility of women achieving equal and just participation in cultural interaction, social activities, and healthcare services. In counter-discourses, the possibilities for women to formulate public claims in order to make surrounding structures more “enabling” of their independency, weakened during the study period.
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- Roumeliotis, Filip, 1980-
(författare)
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Ideological Closure : Drug Prevention in a Post-political Society
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to critically examine drug prevention as a field of problematizations – how drug prevention becomes established as a political technology within this field, how it connects to certain modes of governance, how and under which conditions it constitutes it’s problematic, the questions it asks, it´s implications in terms of political participation and representation, the various bodies of knowledge through which it constitutes the reality upon which it acts, the limits it places on ways of being, questioning, and talking in the world.The main analyses have been conducted in four separate but interrelated articles. Each article addresses a specific dimension of drug prevention in order to get a grasp of how this field is organized. Article 1 examines the shift that has occurred in the Swedish context during the period 1981–2011 in how drugs have been problematized, what knowledge has grounded the specific modes of problematization and which modes of governance this has enabled. In article 2, the currently dominant scientific discipline in the field of drug prevention – prevention science – is critically examined in terms of how it constructs the “drug problem” and the underlying assumptions it carries in regard to reality and political governance. Article 3 addresses the issue of communities’ democratic participation in drug prevention efforts by analyzing the theoretical foundations of the Communities That Care prevention program. The article seeks to uncover how notions of community empowerment and democratic participation are constructed, and how the “community” is established as a political entity in the program. The fourth and final article critically examines the Swedish Social and Emotional Training (SET) program and the political implications of the relationship the program establishes between the subject and emotions.The argument is made that, within the field of drug prevention, questions of political values and priorities in a problematic way are decoupled from the political field and pose a significant problem in terms of the possibilities to engage in democratic deliberation. Within this field of problematizations it becomes impossible to mobilize a politics against social injustice, poverty and inequality. At the same time, the scientific grounding of this mode of governing the drug “problem” acts to naturalize a specific – highly political – way of engaging with drugs.
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