Social inclusion from on high : the policy responses of Canada and Scotland to illicit drug use

• Main Author: Allman, Dan
• Published: University of Edinburgh 2010
• Subjects: 362.29
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.726431

'Social inclusion from on High: The policy responses of Canada and Scotland to illicit drug use' considers policy orientations to the social inclusion of the illicit drug user. It does so through analyses of national policy responses of Canada and Scotland produced between the years 2000 and 2005. The aim is to understand better the positioning of social inclusion within these policy responses and to understand how the responses of Scotland and Canada share similarities yet reflect differences. The first part of the thesis makes the case that the discourse of social inclusion should be understood as an aspect of governance. It makes the case that all advanced capitalist societies can be characterised as inclusion societies, exerting power and extending social control through terms and architectures of inclusion. This case is derived from literatures describing the historical emergence of contemporary forms of governance, including the ascendance of "psy experts" and the development of "risk society", as well as the current focus on social inclusion. The second part of the thesis analyses selected policy documents as comparative examples of how policies towards drug users are framed within the inclusion society. The policy documents concern the extent to which and how two specific governments, Canada and Scotland, frame and seek to govern illicit drug users through discourses of inclusion and exclusion. Two innovative techniques of analysis are used. First, multidimensional scaling is used to analyse the frequency of key concepts. This reveals that Canada did not use a language of social inclusion in their policy documents and use of this language was modest in Scotland. In both countries 'harm reduction' was not the most frequently used key concept. Second, the storylines of the documents are analysed drawing on six key concepts derived from the work of Nikolas Rose - problematisations, explanations, technologies, authorities, subjectivities, strategies. This reveals similarities and differences in governmental approaches to managing illicit drug use in Scotland and Canada. The former adopting the more punitive and, ironically, also therefore probably the more excluding approach to illicit drug users. The thesis makes the argument that the inclusion society complements psy and risk society frameworks by functioning as a form of social architecture for the integration and betterment of the non drug-using self. The work concludes with reflection on how together, the theoretical, methodological and comparative approaches effectively illuminate architectures of inclusion that act to frame subjectivities, facilitate control, revision stratification and reinforce expert ability to govern the social inclusion of the illicit.