Abstract

FERNANDES, Luís  and  RIBEIRO, Catarina. Redução de riscos, estilos de vida junkie e controlo social. Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas [online]. 2002, n.39, pp.57-68. ISSN 0873-6529.

In this article we propose to interpret the significance of risk-reduction strategies in the light of demands to impose social control on the junkie lifestyle. Taking the scientific community’s conventional consensuses on the definition, origins and characteristics of risk reduction as our starting point, we re-problematize them as far as is possible on the basis of the elements provided by an ethnographic characterisation of the junkie world. We conclude by calling attention to the contradictions and paradoxes to which heterogeneous risk-reduction practises are subject, but which do not prevent those practises from functioning as a point of convergence for both a whole range of protagonists in the drugs field and a variety of players from urban deviant milieus.

Keywords : Risk reduction; drug policy; social control.

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