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UBC Theses and Dissertations
Situating "evidence" and constructing users : communicative authority and the production of knowledge in harm reduction evaluation Robbins, Stephen Delbert
Abstract
Despite thirty published evaluation reports citing the effectiveness of Vancouver’s safe injection site (Small 2008), the Canadian federal government refuses to endorse safe injection sites as a health service option available to injection drug users (IDUs). Insite’ s evaluation results are undergoing debate, because two communicative spheres of knowledge, each with a unique authoritative language, are conflicting as each is attempting to gain moral authority over the right to recontextualize drug users. Drawing on a literature review of two harm reduction programs in Vancouver, Insite and Sheway, and expert interviews with evaluators, I show that what constitutes “evidence” is in fact subjective, determined by spheres of communicability that are built upon social, professional and political contexts. To confront the problematic nature of this issue, I suggest that evaluators and overseers need to treat program evaluation as a process of negotiation, best approached in a fluid manner. By obscuring multiple user experiences in the evaluation of harm reduction programs, evaluators and overseers risk imposing their communicative ideologies on what it means to be a drug user.
Item Metadata
Title |
Situating "evidence" and constructing users : communicative authority and the production of knowledge in harm reduction evaluation
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Creator | |
Publisher |
University of British Columbia
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Date Issued |
2008
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Description |
Despite thirty published evaluation reports citing the effectiveness of Vancouver’s safe
injection site (Small 2008), the Canadian federal government refuses to endorse safe
injection sites as a health service option available to injection drug users (IDUs). Insite’ s
evaluation results are undergoing debate, because two communicative spheres of knowledge,
each with a unique authoritative language, are conflicting as each is attempting to gain moral
authority over the right to recontextualize drug users. Drawing on a literature review of two
harm reduction programs in Vancouver, Insite and Sheway, and expert interviews with
evaluators, I show that what constitutes “evidence” is in fact subjective, determined by
spheres of communicability that are built upon social, professional and political contexts. To
confront the problematic nature of this issue, I suggest that evaluators and overseers need to
treat program evaluation as a process of negotiation, best approached in a fluid manner. By
obscuring multiple user experiences in the evaluation of harm reduction programs, evaluators
and overseers risk imposing their communicative ideologies on what it means to be a drug
user.
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Extent |
1214280 bytes
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Genre | |
Type | |
File Format |
application/pdf
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Language |
eng
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Date Available |
2009-02-26
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0066968
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URI | |
Degree | |
Program | |
Affiliation | |
Degree Grantor |
University of British Columbia
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Graduation Date |
2008-11
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Campus | |
Scholarly Level |
Graduate
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Rights URI | |
Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Media
Item Citations and Data
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International