Assembling Harm Reduction Policy in Taiwan

Open Access

Abstract

This dissertation depicts and analyzes the emergence of Taiwan's harm reduction policy as a governmental strategy to address the epidemic of HIV/AIDS among intravenous drug users (IDUs). The policy is portrayed as a biopolitical project situated in Taiwan's unique history of drug control. It was made possible by the office , a heterogeneous assemblage of human and nonhuman actors and elements associated with each other by guanxi . Within this assemblage, different experts endeavored to educate themselves, make alliances, or establish a new profession. This policy fashioned citizen addicts on the one hand and offered opportunities for rethinking policy transplantation on the other. The study utilized archival research, in-depth interviews, and field observations as its data sources. The analysis was informed by the constructivist tradition of grounded theory, especially situational analysis. The concept of assemblages was used to address the fluid and transient situations encountered in the making of harm reduction policy. The theoretical implications of this study include: integrating the discussions of technoscience into a Foucaultian critique of modernity, reappraising the global and the local as explanatory terms, searching for a useful analytic frame such as the office or assemblages, de-centering Euro-American versions of biopolitics, studying the significance of short-lived events, and suggesting a new socio-epistemic position for experts.