HOW PAPERWORK CAN BECOME A TOOL FOR SOCIAL CONTROL IN PUBLIC HEALTH PROGRAMS

"Keeping Ourselves Accountable: How Paperwork Can Become a Tool for Social Control in Public Health Programs"

We often imagine transparency to be the opposite of corruption: open records, clear accounting, and public access to data. However, social scientists have argued that paperwork, accounting, and statistical records can conceal as much as they disclose. Further, just as x-ray scans at the airport are meant to deter weapons or contraband, paperwork can also be used to control human behavior by forcing certain facts to become "visible." This lecture will discuss how paperwork mandated by government ministries and by international donors were used as tools of social control in narcology clinics prior to the Revolution of Dignity and how these accounting rules served to enact political ideologies rather than transcend them.

Jennifer J. Carroll, PhD, MPH, is a medical anthropologist, research scientist, and subject matter expert on substance use and public health. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at NC State, an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Alpert Medical School at Brown University, and a paid consultant for the National Injury Center at the CDC on opioids and opioid overdose. Dr. Carroll’s book, Narkomania: Drugs, HIV, and Citizenship in Ukraine, was awarded the Barbara Heldt Prize for Best Book in any area of Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian studies. She is currently researching the impact of drug induced homicide laws on communities in North Carolina and the use of portable infra-red spectrometers for drug checking, a novel harm reduction strategy to prevent overdose.

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