Paper short abstract:

Antibiotics and benzodiazepines are ubiquitous pharmaceutical substances. We follow their everyday effects, side- and “non”-effects in practices of (de)prescribing and (non)use, asking how they (re)enact moral worlds and chemo-socialities around normality, risky subjectivities, and good citizenship.

Paper long abstract:

Pharmaceuticals often remain uneasy solutions to a host of medical, political, and social ills, promising opportunities for relief while also portending novel, unforeseen risks. Substances like antibiotics for infection control or benzodiazepines for mental health care embody these fundamental ambivalences inherent in the increasing pharmaceuticalization of (public) health. Both ubiquitous substances in use and circulation, they act as “infrastructures” (Chandler 2019) of modern biomedicine, while antibiotic resistance and the risk of addiction, respectively, also underscore the deathly potential of their pharmaco-chemical worlds. As such, prescribers and users alike often conceive of antibiotics and benzodiazepines either as near-invisible pharmaceutical supplies or as overdetermined by their potential risks, fueling efforts of “de-prescribing.” Yet, pharmaceutical substances are never independent of the context in which they “intra-act” (Barad 2003): they are fluid (Hardon & Sanabria 2017), world-making (Nading 2020) actors and methods (Dumit 2021) to engage with the spaces and relations we often take for granted—and could be otherwise. What counts as substances’ effects and “side”-effects reveals how (un)livable and (in)hospitable worlds are created for some, not others. Based on ethnographic research in Austria, we engage with the situated meanings and effectiveness of antibiotics and benzodiazepines, asking how moral worlds and chemo-socialities—around ideas of normality, risky subjectivities, and good citizenship—are (re)made in practices of prescribing and using. Specifically, we consider their (speculative) “non”-effects in practices of de-prescribing and non-use, and how the refusing, rejecting, and opposing of substances enact different and often ambivalent chemo-socialities amid calls for “choosing wisely” and sustainability.