Paper short abstract:

By using a local example of care practices towards socially marginalized drug users in shelters, drug treatment clinics etc. I illustrate how the phenomenon of social marginalization and care practices might transcend national boundaries and can be analysed as both locally and trans-locally situated

Paper long abstract:

Anthropological studies of state practices have given us insight into the many particular actions and care-practices of state workers such as doctors, social workers, psychologists etc. (Miller and Rose, 2013). Foucauldian inspired studies of governmentality have focused on analysing state practices by studying the actions of the workers of the state (see for instance: Miller and Rose, 2013; Winlow and Hall, 2013). Through analyses based on minutiae observations of human interaction such as the words, pauses between words, body language etc., between caretakers and recipients, the caretakers has been analysed as the representors of the state and its care-practices (Miller and Rose 2013). This has resulted in many near-sighted ethnographies on the particulars of care instead of understanding care comparatively, less geographically bound and trans-locally. In this presentation, I wish to illustrate how local studies of socially marginalized drug users everyday life and strategies of managing drug abuse as well as the care practices from state or non-state actors that follow, might be illuminated through a broader comparative lens, and how an otherwise narrow phenomenologically inspired approach might pave the way for comparative transnational and trans-local analyses of social phenomena and practices such as care. Thus; from a narrow local example of a small but diverse groups of drug users and their everyday life in Copenhagen, as well as the diverse examples of care practices from workers at drug clinics, shelters, streets etc., to illustrate how we might analyse social phenomena and care practices from a comparative and general perspective.