Risk, citizenship, and public discourse: coeval dialogues on war and health in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
This article is about September 11, 2001, and its narrated effects on the lives of nine street-involved women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. I outline the locations from which they spoke about war and health: as consumers and economic agents whose bodies are linked to transnational economic processes; as residents in a local community of shared knowledge and practices; and as marginalized citizens of a nation-state. I hope to emphasize the value of engaging research subjects in coeval dialogues that work against essentializing, state-sanctioned discourses narrated in the context of armed conflict and a public health crisis. To women drug users in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, the "War against Terror" evokes particular sites of knowledge: the body, the local community, and transnational processes. Their repertoires of war stimulate questions about citizenship and perceptions of risk, challenging dominating medical and political discourses that tend to temporally and spatially localize their engagement with the world.
Robertson
Leslie A
LA
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Windsor, Ontario. 401 Sunset Ave., Windsor, Ontario. rleslie@uwindsor.ca
D000328:Adult; D001294:Attitude to Health; D001955:British Columbia; D005260:Female; D017144:Focus Groups; D006303:Health Services, Indigenous / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006703:Ill-Housed Persons / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D013287:Illicit Drugs / Q000600:supply & distribution; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008875:Middle Aged; D018671:Needle-Exchange Programs / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011634:Public Health; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D012306:Risk; D016320:Substance Abuse Treatment Centers; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000517:prevention & control*; D023481:Terrorism; D014504:Urban Health; D014857:Warfare; D016387:Women's Health
D013287:Illicit Drugs