Living ?€?addiction?€? in states of disruption: a transdisciplinary approach to drug consumption and recovery in the Middle East
1 March 2021 - 28 February 2026
PI/s in 91´«Ã½: Professor Maziyar Ghiabi
Funding awarded: £ 350,000
Sponsor(s): Wellcome Trust
Project webpage(s)
About the research
Addiction?€? is a powerful diagnostic framework in interpreting human behaviour. Whether metaphorical, self-diagnosed or understood through biomedical inquiry, individuals are said to develop chronic ?€?addictive?€? relations with different things such as food, sex, gambling and mind-altering substances. Yet only illicit drugs are the object of strict political regulation and public control.
But can we learn what is ?€?addiction?€? from drug consumers?€? perspective? Do different political/ideological regimes influence people?€?s experience of ?€?addiction?€?? Do cultures and historical events affect the lived experience of ?€?addiction?€? and can we understand it beyond the lens of pathology?
I will use archival and ethnographic methods to analyse the everyday life of ?€?addiction?€? in states of disruption in the Middle East. Looking at Iran, Lebanon and Afghan and Syrian displaced communities living there, I will show how people using drugs, scholars treating ?€?addiction?€? and healers shape the way we can understand ?€?addiction?€?.