WHEN TREATMENT IS VIOLENCE: MAKING, TREATING, AND REGULATING ADDICTION IN NEPALI PRIVATE REHABILITATION CENTERS

Abstract

Situated in Kathmandu, Nepal, this thesis discusses the causes and consequences of placing addiction treatment within the privatizing Nepali healthcare market. Based on fieldwork conducted during the summer of 2018, I examine the ways in which state biopower is exercised in diffuse states, where multiple stakeholders operate to create and maintain a profitable status quo. This status quo involves the dispersal of the exercise of biopower to private actors, in this case for-profit rehabilitation centers, which are privileged to intern and treat addicted individuals on the periphery of state and medical regulatory structures in spaces of exception. I discuss the social processes through which drug abuse discourses, created by private addiction treatment centers, create the substance dependent as immoral individuals, effectively revoking their right to make claims of safety on the state. Finally, I examine how the lines between violence and therapy are blurred within private addiction treatment centers through narratives describing mistreatment and torture within the treatment setting.