toward interdisciplinary scholarship on addiction
Critics of mandatory drug addiction treatment-- e.g. critics of the US drug court movement-- *rarely* engage with the extensive literature created by critics of psychiatric coercive institutionalization, e.g. disability rights scholars, mad pride advocates, and neurodiversity advocates. (Yet their central political projects are extremely similar and fundamentally overlap!)
Neither the critics of mandatory addiction treatment, nor the critics of coercive psychiatric institutionalization, ever much engage with the *extensive* and *elaborate* political philosophy literature on (legal and/or medical) paternalism vs. anti-paternalism, (over-)criminalization, political legitimacy, etc. (Yet the latter fields have made countless key clarifications and arguments that are clearly extremely important for the goals of these critics of coercion!)
The sociologists in critical addiction studies and adjacent fields rarely ever engage with the analytic philosophers of addiction, nor philosophers of medicine, nor philosophers of autonomy (nor free will, nor psychology, nor mind, nor practical rationality), etc. (This is only *barely* beginning to change a little bit, e.g. with the release of the interdisciplinary "Routledge Handbook of Science and Philosophy of Addiction" a couple years ago, and an interdisciplinary UK conference last year.)
And almost *none* of these groups (with the semi-exception of some sociologists) *ever* engage with the literature of drug user self-advocates, such as the International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD) or the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU). (Even the "Routledge Handbook" ignores them!)
I hope it is clear now that there is an utterly immense missed opportunity here, whose breadth and depth are ABSOLUTELY MADDENING. One of the primary long-term goals of my scholarship is to make progress toward *integrating* these many fields of study and conversation and advocacy, so that a half-decent interdisciplinary framework for critical thinking about addiction can *finally* (for the first time in history) be created.
