Selections of reality: applying Burke's dramatism to a harm reduction program.
Kenneth Burke's dramatistic perspective is applied to accounts told by staff members working in methadone maintenance treatment centres in Copenhagen, Denmark. As a harm reduction strategy, methadone maintenance is designed to reduce the costs and dangers of chronic long-term drug use by providing substitution (methadone) treatment to users. Burke's dramatistic perspective calls attention to the recurring relationships among rhetorical elements within accounts of social reality. The elements form a pentad: scene, purpose, agent, agency and acts. Our analysis examines how the ideal of governmentality is constructed by staff members to justify and criticize the operations of the Copenhagen methadone maintenance program. For Burke, social criticism involves rearranging pentadic elements to produce new meanings and justify alternative actions. We discuss how Burke's perspective might be developed by sociologists as a critical dramatism of social policies and programs.
Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5, Bld. 16 DK-1014 Copenhagen K, Denmark; SFI - The Danish National Center for Social Research, Herluf Trolles gade 11, 1052 Copenhagen K, Denmark. Electronic address: mj@soc.ku.dk.
Margaretha
M
Järvinen
Department of Social and Cultural Sciences, Marquette University, PO 1881, Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881, USA. Electronic address: gale.miller@marquette.edu.
Gale
G
Miller
D003718:Denmark; D040261:Harm Reduction; D006801:Humans; D008691:Methadone / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D058850:Opiate Substitution Treatment / Q000379:methods*; D009293:Opioid-Related Disorders / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D011640:Public Policy; D016320:Substance Abuse Treatment Centers / Q000458:organization & administration
D008691:Methadone
Dramatism; Drug addiction; Ethics; Governmentality; Harm reduction; Methadone maintenance