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Recovering
Assemblages
Unfolding Sociomaterial
Relations of Drug Use
and Recovery
Aysel Sultan
Recovering Assemblages
Aysel Sultan
Recovering
Assemblages
Unfolding Sociomaterial Relations
of Drug Use and Recovery
Aysel Sultan
School of Social Sciences and Technology
Technical University of Munich
Munich, Germany
ISBN 978-981-19-1234-4 ISBN 978-981-19-1235-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1235-1
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To all who shared with me their stories of drug use and recovery
Preface
What is recovery? Is recovery a process of individual transformation, an

endpoint, or a part of drug use? How do people ‘do’ recovery and how
can research trace this? How do different drug policies and national drug
discourses understand and enforce recovery? This book explores these
questions and offers personal accounts of recovery that shed light on
differences, contexts, relations, and meanings. It aims to expand research
into individual, communal, and political roles of recovery and take the
use of the concept beyond the discourse of free will, reintegration, and
formal treatment. It is also the aim of this book to address the ques-
tions on what makes recovery a contested concept, how can we better
approach it, and whether there is a need to talk about recovery at all,
especially in semiotic, sociomaterial, and relational forms. As the book
progresses, we encounter a list of definitions that different health organi-
zations, treatment professionals, and researchers have given to recovery.
Merging biomedical, social-psychological, and environmental dimen-
sions, recovery in itself is a delicate concept to study. Much depends
on the researcher’s ideas of where to locate recovery, how and when
to begin to study it, and how long to follow participants to establish
vii
viii Preface
whether recovery was successful, is still in progress, or became a closed

chapter in someone’s life. It becomes an especially thorny issue if one
tries to fix the process of recovery in such temporal dimensions. There-
fore, in this book, the reader is presented with accounts that do not reveal
neat and causal stories of recovery, but with ones that spur the chaos,
unruliness, and contingency of day-to-day practices, of everyday life. It
is the aim of this book to tell a number of stories of recovery and offer
multiple definitions of the concept, as well as ways to see more clearly the
erratic, arbitrary, ambiguous character of real experiences. Empowered
by Science and Technology Studies (STS) theory and groundbreaking
works of many critical drug scholars on rethinking new ways on how to
approach concepts of addiction, consumption, drugs, and recovery, the
book gradually builds from material aspects and semiotic and socioma-
terial relations, to cultural and structural dimensions informing national
drug discourse.
The addiction literature shows a paradigm shift in the history of
recovery movement from medical and pathological discourse to solution-
based systems of care (White & Kurtz, 2006; White, 2007). From
the 1950s onward recovery became a movement championed by self-
help fellowships, until the beginning of the millennium which marked
a shift in drug policies, and recovery-oriented formal drug treatment
began to develop (Travis, 2010). Recovery begins to mean a longer,
more inclusive, and more humanistic approach to abstinence, but also
a more personal, deep, and multidimensional journey. This eventually
informs drug treatment policies, designing a variety of care services and
training to combat addiction and help a person using drugs become inte-
grated ‘back’ into society. In classical definition, this means successfully
completing the treatment, searching, and applying for jobs, regaining
skills and competencies or acquiring new ones, restoring social and
medical security, and in this process becoming what would be called a
responsible citizen. In other words, this was (and still largely remains
so) the process of institutionalization of recovery, which sprung far
away from its initial meaning as part of self-help initiatives. In its ‘new’
meaning, recovery involves many more dimensions of human’s life that
can be intervened in and subsequently managed by various treatment
agendas.
Preface ix
The second part of this book is concerned with how young people
undergo treatment for alcohol and other drugs and experience recovery
on a day-to-day basis. One way to approach this is to look into
different ideas, perceptions, and definitions around recovery. Further-
more, bringing an Anglo-American concept to a discussion in German
and Azerbaijani contexts, means merging knowledge in a diverse and
explorative way. On the one hand, the book closely engages with
Western, critical scholarship about recovery and on the other, it puts
forward an idea that the concept may not have a prominent equiva-
lence in Azerbaijan and even in a Western state like Germany. Exploring
recovery in countries that are not known for promoting and designing
recovery-oriented systems of care as it is in the UK or Australia, chal-
lenges not only the idea of recovery, but also the use of the concept in
both scholarship and practice. The book, thus, addresses the challenges
of describing and understanding recovery in a non-Western milieu. To
do this, it shows how the former use of the concept underlines the
imperial legacy of prohibitionist drug policies that have trapped recovery
within institutional control mechanisms. The interviews conducted by
the author with young people from Azerbaijan and Germany offer vastly
diverse accounts of experiences and interpretations highlighting cultur-
ally specific contexts. These accounts help to take the concept beyond
the normative and culturally familiar understandings and explore non-
representational accounts as the book builds on critical drug studies using
theories of materialist ontology and relational thinking. The book offers
nine chapters.
Chapter 1 broadly looks into the history of the recovery movement in
Anglo-American discourse and follows the scientific trajectory up until
the recent definitions and interdisciplinary understandings of recovery.
It then centers the discussion around recovery in young people and for
that purpose provides a review of the central concepts of young people
and drug use in young age.
Chapter 2 moves to give an overview of recovery in two partic-
ular countries: Azerbaijan and Germany and briefly addresses historical,
political, and semiotic questions. The chapter reviews what kind of
differentiated perspectives based on data from Azerbaijan and Germany
might bring to the discussion of recovery contexts on an international
x Preface
level. The central purpose of this chapter is to syndicate the overall

knowledge about recovery on drug use among young people. Due to the
lack of research studies in young people’s recovery, the two phenomena
are juxtaposed through a critical discussion of definitions. A connec-
tion is then drawn to how to position young people when tracing a
journey from and with drug use toward and together with recovery in two
fundamentally different countries.
From here, Chapter 3 shows that this book builds on and contributes
to two areas of research: (1) post-human, materialist ontological
studies of drugs and (2) critical drug research. The first subsection
discusses post-human ontological theories with a special focus on
Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) and empirical philosophy as well as
the concept of assemblages. Both approaches highlight the importance
of recognizing nonhuman agencies and avoiding binary portrayals of
reality such as abstinence/recovery, drug use/addiction, healthy/diseased,
human/nonhuman. The second subsection shows that critical recovery
research highlights a range of normative and culturally familiar assump-
tions about young people and drug use that underpin the knowledge
production in treatment systems, recovery programs, and young subjec-
tivities in recovery.
Chapter 4 introduces materials and data used in the book to offer
specific cases and develop the assemblage thinking for the analysis of
recovery, offers a discussion on ethics, cross-language issues, and overall
strategies of data analysis. The chapter also deals with the largest propor-
tion of ethnographic data used in the book, describing treatment settings
and national strategies in Azerbaijan and Germany. Most importantly,
this chapter lays out a careful consideration of the notion of comparison
in research and uses an STS approach to analyze comparing practices and
critically reflect on the outcome of the study. Next, the chapter intro-
duces the composite methodological task of combining ANT, qualitative
interview data, and narrative analysis. The aim of this discussion is to
show how recovery experiences are produced in semiotic–sociomaterial
relations, in that this approach accounts for both the lived experiences
and the verbal process of making sense of past experiences in and while
their narration.
Preface xi
Chapter 5 explores social contexts of recovery experiences. Following

Latour’s (2005) take on the meaning of the ‘social’ as a relational under-
standing, the chapter translates the idea of social contexts into dynamic
relations. To do this, the analysis follows conceptualization of drug-use
contexts (Duff, 2007) and syndicates it with the qualitative empirical
data. This conceptualization diverges from the pre-conceived notion of
context as static and particular for this book, does not define it by
national borders of Azerbaijan and Germany, or by human actions alone.
Instead it shows context as something dynamic, made and remade in
practice (Duff, 2012). The chapter argues that contexts vary on the basis
of immediate experiences by asking an open question of whether recovery
can and should always be understood within formal treatment settings
and guided routine plans. It also shows the various understandings of
the spatio-temporal dimensions of personal experiences that divert from
traditional, Western models of recovery. By taking a dynamic approach
toward context and the ‘social’, the chapter shows the contestability of
the recovery concept and recovery experiences.
Chapter 6 discusses individual case studies and introduces four
different recovery forms: transitional, self-regulated or natural, invol-
untary, and habitual. The chapter particularly highlights the role of
arbitrary relations and unexpected events that end up forming into what
would retrospectively be called recovery experiences.
Chapter 7 focuses on recovery and recovering assemblages. Drawing
on ANT and assemblage approaches, the chapter demonstrates the diver-
sity of recovery experiences in different contexts, a comparison between
two countries representing and practicing fundamentally different treat-
ment policies provides a ground on which to build this argument. In
relation to this, discussed are also young people’s ideas about getting
better and how these influence their choices of and in recovery, how
available sources change and impact these choices, what future perspec-
tives are envisioned, and what forces are then mobilized to achieve
them.
Chapter 8 uses theoretical knowledge and data to advance the crit-
ical discussion on dyadic portrayal of recovery that is often seen as
either an endpoint or a step-by-step process. The chapter poses three
questions: Where does recovery start and where does it end, if it is a
xii Preface
process in continuous circulation? How does developmental character

of recovery persevere (or fail to do so) in discontinued relations and
associations between affects, bodies, spaces, and forces? The chapter
argues that portrayal of recovery as a lifelong journey encompasses prac-
tices that entail stigmatization, exclusion, and identity conflicts, thereby,
counterintuitively reinforcing similar attitudes about drug use.
The final Conclusion chapter of part III of the book offers a discussion
of policy implications and further research questions, reviews the central
ideas of the book, and acknowledges the limitations.
Frankfurt, Germany Aysel Sultan

2021
References
Duff, C. (2007). Towards a theory of drug use contexts: Space, embodiment
and practice. Addiction Research and Theory, 15 (5), 503–519. https://doi.
org/10.1080/16066350601165448
Duff, C. (2012). Accounting for context: Exploring the role of objects
and spaces in the consumption of alcohol and other drugs. Social and
Cultural Geography, 13(2), 145–159. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.
2012.655765
Travis, T. (2010). Language of the Heart: A cultural history of the recovery
movement from alcoholics anonymous to Oprah Winfrey. University of North
Carolina Press.
White, W. L. (2007). Addiction recovery: Its definition and conceptual bound-
aries. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 33(3), 229–241. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.jsat.2007.04.015
White, W. L., & Kurtz, E. (2006). The varieties of recovery experience: A
primer for addiction treatment professionals and recovery advocates. Inter-
national Journal of Self Help and Self Care, 3(1–2), 21–61. https://doi.org/
10.2190/911R-MTQ5-VJ1H-75CU
Acknowledgments
This book is a revised version of a doctoral dissertation defended on June

11, 2019, at the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-University in Frankfurt
am Main under the title “Recovering assemblages: Unfolding social and
material practices of drug recovery in youth.” Seal number D.30
Some of the data and analysis in the book re-uses and reworks
previously published material.
Some parts of Chapter 1

Sultan, A. (2021). ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be?’ The Place
and Wellbeing of Young People in Azerbaijan’s Drug Policy. Child
Indicators Research. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-021-09874-5
Chapter 5
Sultan, A. and Duff, C. (2021). Assembling and diversifying social
contexts of recovery. International Journal of Drug Policy. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.drugpo.2020.102979
xiii
xiv Acknowledgments
Some parts of Chapter 6

Sultan, A. and Andersen, S. (2019). ‘A child on drugs’: Conceptual-
ising childhood experiences of agency and vulnerability. Global Studies
of Childhood . https://doi.org/10.1177/2043610619860996
Sultan, A. and Duff, C. (2022). The line of vulnerability in a recovery
assemblage. International Journal of Drug Policy. https://doi.org/10.
1016/j.drugpo.2022.103740
Contents
Part I Connecting the Dots

1 The Need to Rethink Recovery 3
2 Materialist Thinking in Critical Recovery Studies 21
3 The Stake of a Comparative Approach 49
4 Constructing Stories, Rebuilding Attachments 89
Part II Diversifying Knowledge and Science of Recovery

5 Assembling and Diversifying Social Contexts
of Recovery 127
6 Tracing Relations and Unfolding Recovery Forms 161
7 Body, Detox, Affect 201
xv
xvi Contents
Part III Recovery from and within Drug Use

8 Enacting Recovery: Process or Endpoint? 233
9 Conclusion 261
Index 277
Abbreviations
AA Alcoholics Anonymous
ADHD Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
ANT Actor-Network-Theory
MMT Methadone Maintenance Program
NA Narcotics Anonymous
ROSC Recovery-Oriented Systems of Care
STS Science and Technology Studies
UNODC United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
xvii
Part I
Connecting the Dots
1
The Need to Rethink Recovery
Recovery is often understood and sometimes even interchangeably used

as part of formal treatment. As recent developments in policy and
research continue challenging normative ideas around drugs and people
who use drugs, the concept of recovery finds a growing ubiquity
in theory and practice. Moreover, the emergence of new policies on
recovery-based treatment and systems of care contribute to promoting
the importance of professional intervention and financial investment in
recovery programs. The need to scrutinize the meanings of this term
recovery, therefore, comes not only from the expanding sociological
interest in recovery, but also from the increasing number of over-
dose deaths, high rates of treatment termination, and recurrent patients
reporting ineffectiveness of the existing treatment options. As the diver-
sity of drugs and drug-use cultures expand, there is a growing need
to understand recovery models beyond self-help fellowships and ther-
apeutic clinics. Besides understanding recovery better, research strives
for direct implications in drug policy and design of recovery-based
systems of care that would account for the diversity of lived experi-
ences. Research and critical discussions have made clear that recovery
cannot be thought of in a vacuum, detached from drug use, treatment
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 3
A. Sultan, Recovering Assemblages,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1235-1_1
4 A. Sultan
environment, policies, socioeconomic status, relationships, and personal

capabilities. Studies measuring recovery outcomes and treatment services
have found that isolated therapeutic environments often fall short in
responding to patients’ needs and become efficient upon release of the
patient.
Interdisciplinary social studies suggests that recovery is a contested area
for both research and practice, as more needs to be explored in rela-
tion to younger age groups (Blomqvist, 2002), underrepresentation of
women in recovery programs (Wincup, 2016), and especially the contex-
tual diversities characterizing individual experiences (Cox et al., 2016).
In view of its wide use, definition of the concept remains vague, as
policy-makers and researchers thoroughly debate, from a range of social,
cultural, medical, and material perspectives, what it means to recover.
Critical studies on drug use and recovery have advanced in the ways
these terms are understood ontologically and could be researched differ-
ently. For example, instead of studying recovery as an accumulation of
different capitals and individual strength, critical recovery studies looks
at how recovery comes to be across and in different relations between
human and nonhuman actors and the environment. The role of spaces,
affects, and bodily capacities become central in materialist ontological
inquiries and thereby change our perception of drug use, intoxication,
and recovery as these become fluid and emergent assemblages.
A review of literature defines several areas on which critical research
on recovery has focused until now. Researchers debated (1) the lack
of an interdisciplinary collaborative definition of recovery, (2) recovery
concepts that cultivate responsibilization, self-shaming, and belief in
willpower, (3) policies and problematizations of drug use through
zero-tolerance models and abstinence goals reinforced in institutional
drug treatment programs, (4) formal treatment agendas that require
“stories of change” as a demonstration of commitment, (5) self-
stigmatization of lifelong ‘addict’ identities produced by self-help fellow-
ships such as lifelong ‘addict’ identity, (6) mechanisms of state and
social control such as court-ordered abstinence programs in relation to
forced treatment (particularly of young people), (7) recovery advocacy
for more community-based, individually tailored and strength-oriented
approaches, and finally (8) post-humanist approaches calling to decen-

tralize the human actor in the events of drug use and recovery.
Critical studies of drug use draw attention to main addiction discourse
as the core field that understands recovery as a desired end to drug
use. This, in turn, suggests that policies do not often treat recovery and
treatment as the main matters of concern, but rather focus on the prob-
lematization of drug use as a neurobiological addiction disorder. As drug
studies drawing on critical policy analysis tools have outlined, solu-
tions offered in forms of policies (see, for example, Bacchi, 2009, 2015)
which target the elimination of the problem—drugs and drug use—
and thereby reinforce the existing prohibitive and stigmatizing policies
through treatment and recovery agendas (Lancaster et al., 2015). Inter-
national drug policy studies have also shown the different ways in which
formal treatment programs reproduce the criminalizing and patholo-
gizing approaches through treating patients as weak and incapable of
controlling their brain and bodies.
Recovery studies are also generally of two types: those looking into
treatment programs and policies, and those that study so-called natural
recoveries, focusing on self-help and community interventions, though
the literature on the former is far greater. In this book, recovery is
approached from four perspectives: in relation to young people, in intra-
action with drug use, in both formal treatment and informal recovery
settings, and in regard to two different national cases. The main purpose
is to explore how both to contextualize and to unfold the specificities of
recovery in young people, without differentiating recovery as an oppo-
site case of drug use. Three main questions inform the overall content
of the book: (1) What makes recovery possible—what actors (human
and nonhuman) entangle in the process of making recovery? (2) How
do young people make and remake sense of their personal alcohol and
other drug recovery in context? (3) How do we conceive of recovery as
an assemblage and what forms does this assemblage take? Here, the main
objectives are to understand how young people who use drugs make sense
of recovery in formal and informal treatment settings and what makes up
the concept and contexts of recovery.
For mapping out the differences in recovery experiences, it is essen-
tial to briefly summarize the emergence of the recovery movement in
6 A. Sultan
the West. Current understandings of recovery, as contested as they may

be, have partly emerged from a widely known phenomenon—Alcoholics
Anonymous (AA). It began in the USA in 1935 as a 12-Step movement
that defined recovery as a response of complete cessation against loss
of control over alcohol consumption (see Travis, 2010). Starting with
a simple written agenda, AA was meant to guide people who defined
their drinking as problematic toward an ‘ultimate cure’ through finding
and restoring faith (Valverde, 1998). The simple aim of the initiative
was to offer mutual support in an intimate and trustful space and only
for those who joined the program with the aim of absolute sobriety. To
date, the program maintains that intimate and closed policy and does
not welcome outsiders. This highlights a strong belief in the ontolog-
ical difference between “alcoholics” (or “real alcoholics”) and “normal
drinkers” that sets the program’s core agenda, representing recovery as
an enlightenment underpinning a correctional intervention (see Keane
2000). Nevertheless, for many, AA remained efficient mainly due to its
“decentralized and anarchic” structure (Travis, 2010: 5), speaking more
about fellowship and mutual support than responsibility and obligations.
Self-help fellowships cannot be compared to other forms of recovery
programs, especially those stemming from institutional treatment struc-
tures. Longitudinal research shows that young people experience higher
rates of relapse after formal treatment, while peer-based fellowships show
better results even though the retention and attendance is registered
mostly among habitual users (Kelly et al., 2008). Peer-based self-help
programs are said to be more successful, despite having used similar
conversion techniques as formal therapies (Blomqvist, 2002). In this
respect, the lack of self-help initiatives among younger people and the
higher rates of court-ordered referral to formal treatment may explain the
low attendance among young people. Additionally, AA /NA (Narcotics
Anonymous) meetings include people of all age groups, while formal
treatment and diverse aftercare programs for young people operate on the
basis of supervised communal living and recovery high schools. There is
a lack of evidence to suggest possible effects of this difference; however,
data analyzed in this book show that for some young people, sharing
treatment spaces with older patients can be problematic and unwanted.
The transition from a traditional, clinical detoxification model toward

community engagement and individually tailored program agendas has
sparked a new wave of studies into the understanding of recovery.
The increasing polarization of the field between harm reductionism
and an abstinence-based approach leaves more open questions about
recovery now than ever before (Lancaster et al., 2015). Harm reduc-
tionists actively promote safer use, thereby trying to reduce the stigma
against drug users and to allow a positive image of drugs. Some qualita-
tive studies began to emerge in this direction, in order to show positive,
generally neglected sides of drug-using lifestyle, arguing that users exert
more control and skill than is believed in the general drug discourse
(Pienaar & Dilkes-Frayne, 2017). It can be said that “harm reduction as a
philosophy shifts the moral context in health care away from the primary
goal of fixing individuals towards one of reducing harm” (Pauly, 2008:
6). Harm reduction policies generally believe that focusing on treatment
and recovery reinforces negative associations around drug users. This
is especially prominent in relation to an abstinence-based meaning of
recovery (Berridge, 2012). Therefore, harm reduction’s emphasis is on
promoting controlled use via education and accessible service provision.
The current harm reduction approach implemented in drug checking
services, promotion of drug-positive attitudes, and decriminalization
policies holds against the stigmatizing potential of healthy lifestyle and
citizenship ideas that are usually cultivated through radical interven-
tion and abstinence-oriented programs (Campbell & Shaw, 2008). This
critical discourse believes that an abstinence-only approach inherently
implies that users have no control over their behavior and preferences,
and unless completely ceased, consumption will always be hazardous.
Instead, the harm reduction approach prefers to view drug users as
individuals who are capable of control and to offer users ways of
reducing harms of drugs while maintaining use and respecting diver-
sity of lifestyles. The harm reduction perspective privileges quality of
life, well-being, and reduction of negative consequences of drug use
(Savic and Fomiatti, 2016). However, harm reduction strategies both
qualitatively and quantitatively vary across not only different national
contexts, but also different service systems and individual needs (Savic
and Fomiatti, 2016). Therefore, a definitive specification of whether
8 A. Sultan
these variations and lived experiences of users support the idea of a harm
reduction-based definition of recovery is not yet evidence-based.
Almost since the emergence of harm reduction, critics have accused it
of the same governing ideology that harm reduction posed itself against,
debating how the freedom of choice promoted by harm reduction exer-
cised yet another form of coercive conformity (Keane, 2003; O’Malley,
2009). With this passionate critique, researchers also agree that neolib-
eral politics can also be empowering for drug users in that they grant
“recognition, trust, and legitimation” to drugs users, while still largely
neglecting their material conditions and daily experiences of use and
associated life challenges (Moore & Fraser, 2006: 3036).
The history of recovery-based treatment stems from medical interven-
tions, which include clinical detoxification and substitution therapies.
Critics have argued that this kind of intervention treatment endorses the
“addiction-as-disease” model, thereby establishing “a condition one must
recover from” (Frank, 2017: 2). Studies analyzing treatment policy in the
UK and other Western states found that the recovery-based treatment
system, more often than recognized, orients itself at achieving a complete
abstinence, responsibility, citizenship, and drug-free society (McKeganey,
2014). However, there is also a belief that substitution programs such as
Methadone Maintenance Therapy (MMT) and court-ordered abstinence
programs, in general, act as a refuge for users to escape criminalization
(Frank, 2017).
What might be setting recovery apart from treatment is debatable as
well. For example, only a decade ago the US Department of Labor stated
that recovery, as opposed to short-term abstinence in treatment, “is the
process by which the ingestion of alcohol or other drugs is recognized
as problematic and avoided” (Laudet, 2007: 244). More recent defini-
tions of recovery incline toward inclusiveness, mentioning well-being,
emotional, physical and mental health, and improved quality of life (e.g.,
Collins & McCamley, 2018; Duff, 2014; Neale, Nettleton, & Pickering,
2011). More researchers agree on the following and similar definitions
of recovery as “a lived experience of improved life quality and a sense
of empowerment; that the principles of recovery focus on the central
ideas of hope, choice, freedom and aspiration that are experienced rather
than diagnosed and occur in real life settings rather than in the rarefied
atmosphere of clinical settings” (Best and Laudet, 2010: 2).
If the traditional understandings of recovery focus on an individual’s
journey, enlightenment, and retention (Keane, 2000), more recent
research suggests that recovery has individual, collective, and political
sides to it. Thus, amidst rising controversies about the degree of effec-
tiveness of recovery-based treatment programs, several research studies
using both qualitative and quantitative approaches addressed the ques-
tions “what drug users really want from drug treatment” and “whether
harm reduction is a useful strategy when drug users want abstinence”
(McKeganey, Morris, Neal et al., 2004; Neale, Nettleton, & Pick-
ering, 2013). These studies found that most people reaching out for
harm reduction services hope to achieve lifelong abstinence instead of
reduced but continuing consumption, and therefore suggest allowing
harm reduction services to incorporate lifelong strategies to ensure
complete abstinence (McKeganey et al., 2004).
Even though recovery-based policy primarily prioritizes the well-
being of a person who uses drugs, its varying definitions and imple-
mentation methods follow the classic formula of full recovery. “Full”
recovery usually refers to “abstinence from all illicit drugs and substi-
tutes” (Stevens & Zampini, 2018: 65) and improvement in all possible
aspects of one’s life. Only recently has there been an emergent criticism
of the Western recovery model prioritizing this idea, and many authors
have challenged the moral weight of such an approach (e.g., Stevens &
Ritter, 2013; Parkin, 2016). This critique draws on poverty, lack of social
resources and capital, inequality, and marginalization as the foremost
reasons for harmful consequences in use of controlled drugs and fail-
ures in subsequent treatment (Penn, Strike, & Mukkath, 2016; Roy &
Buchanan, 2016). Furthermore, the recovery discourse itself is said to
have drawn many users seeking help into a quandary. Placed in the divi-
sion between AA /NA ideology of a lifelong recovery through faith and
commitment and addiction as a brain-disease model, “[…] participants
in drug abuse treatment discourse must somehow reconcile the view
that they can be socially empowered to overcome their drug problems
with the view that those problems are, indeed, caused by a disease over
which they have little or no personal control” (Weinberg, 2000: 618).
10 A. Sultan
The question is where does the correlation of success lie between access
to multilevel treatment opportunities and the definition of the recovery
concept itself as something cultivated by a powerful economic sector
and political investment (Travis, 2010). It must be said that there is
less input to advance theoretical and conceptual rethinking of recovery,
and emphasis on practice-based model development remains the most
substantive part of the current literature.
Recognizing various forms of drug use should also be indicative for
recognizing various forms of recovery. The addiction research involves
a range of interdisciplinary studies addressing issues such as inequalities
and human rights (Stevens, 2011), social suffering and injecting-drug-
use patterns (Bourgois, 2002), deviance and user motives (Becker, 2016),
social supply chains and darknet (Barratt & Aldridge, 2016), and hetero-
geneous constellations of drug use settings (Zinberg, 1984) among
others. Recovery debates, in comparison to this, have relatively less
research available.
The previous shifts toward normalization of drug use practices
(Pennay & Measham, 2016) and recognition of pleasure as the main
driving aspect of drug use (e.g., Bøhling, 2017) are leading discussions of
treatment and recovery into a rather unwarranted corner. While with the
normalization discourse, drug use is seen almost as an inseparable part
of young people’s culture within certain contexts (Parker, Williams, &
Aldridge, 2002; Reith, 2004), the potential of seeking treatment is
marginalized as an extreme end that is almost incompatible with the
pleasurable drug-use culture. This movement potentially overshadows
the importance of recovery because of its association with treatment
policies and because speaking of treatment often highlights the negative
consequences of drug use. For many harm reductionists, this represents
a danger of reproducing stigmatization around drug use. Developments
in socio-political, economic, medical, and neuroscientific fields have led
drug-use studies from medicalization to moralization to normalization
discourses (Room, 2005). These complex transitions have had a tendency
of defining recovery alongside the developments in drug-use studies.
For example, a pioneering work on ‘new recovery’ phenomenon has
emerged first in the UK and later, in the state of Victoria, Australia,
and aims at more individualized, empowering, resource-oriented, and
asset-based care (Best & Laudet, 2010; Best & Lubman, 2012; Heather
et al., 2017). This ‘new’ wave of recovery focuses on two leading
perspectives: (a) an identity transformation through individual journey
of reconnection and meaningful activities (Best et al., 2016), and (b)
assertive-linkage, a strategy of involving people in need of intervention
through community work (Best et al., 2017). This puts the major focus
of the ‘new’ recovery on the concept of recovery capital, which has made
important contributions to current debates about more inclusive and
nuanced definitions of individual needs and community-based recovery
sources (Cloud & Granfield, 2008; Hennessy, 2017).
The ‘new’ recovery has been criticized from the same perspective as
the traditional and culturally familiar recovery. Critics point out the
underlying concept of ‘new’ recovery that continues to address the
“flaws” of drug use, which are believed to hinder people from being
full participants in the society and from carrying their share of respon-
sibilities to social and economic progress, in other words, suggesting an
“improvable self ” (Fomiatti et al., 2018: 2). There are also some other
emerging new perspectives that offer assessments of the above discussed
constellations in recovery work. For example, Fomiatti, Moore, & Fraser
(2017) discuss identity construction and interpellation modes inherent
in traditional drug recovery approaches in Australia. The authors argue
that the treatment contexts shape the way drug users seeking interven-
tion reconstruct their “addict identities” as opposed to their previous
perception of their own drug use before treatment. They discuss the insti-
tutionalized recovery identities through service users’ perspectives, where
recovering individuals learn to see themselves as forever in recovery and
acknowledge their potential toward addictive behaviors as an inherent,
non-detachable part of their identities (see Carr, 2010). This ideology is
especially prominent in 12-Step programs that construct beliefs and co-
produce identities, which Fomiatti and colleagues (2017) explain as the
effect of interpellation, drawing on Judith Butler’s use of the concept. My
work in this book comes close to these critical debates on “new” recovery
models but departs in two significant ways.
There are parallels that emphasize the flaws of “improvable self ” or
“working on the self ” (Zigon, 2011: 62), and address how these forms
of “social control” emerge in formal treatment contexts. However, the
12 A. Sultan
assemblage approach to recovery undertaken in this book highlights

different aspects, as well. First, recovery is not thought of as a separate,
post-drug use phase; rather it is treated as part of drug use and only in the
relation to drug use. The book gradually maps out the different hetero-
geneous relations, the role of nonhuman forces, affects, and spaces to
show how recovery and drug use co-constitute each other, concluding
that one cannot exist without the other. In this mission, the idea of
drug use is transformed, too. The data and analysis clearly show how
recovery exists in habitual forms of drug use and, in fact, sustains drug
use. Second, unlike “new” recovery and “community-based” treatment
models, the assemblage shows how single events constitute what comes
to be recovery.
In response to shortcomings of the traditional recovery models, crit-
ical drug studies suggest thinking in different modes about recovery (see
Frank, 2017; Monaghan & Wincup, 2013; Neale et al., 2013; Timpson
et al., 2016). One such way is by incorporating more sensitivity to the
role of material objects and other nonhuman and more-than-human
forces, and considering the importance of the day-to-day practices of
people who use drugs and who need professional treatment support.
This sensitivity calls for more nuanced and better informed theoretical
and methodological approaches which would allow studying often-
neglected details and practices, along with personal stories and feelings.
It means taking a relational approach toward understanding recovery and
inquiring about it. The relational approach considers how things shape
each other, how both human and nonhuman bodies come together in
becoming a “state of recovery” or a “process of recovering” or an “event
of feeling better.” Relations between bodies, spaces, objects, and events
that emerge in relations between practices and the affects are what an
ontological, materialist inquiry takes into account. Tracing these relations
and looking for the meanings they carry and the effects they have in the
moment, as well as in the long-term, requires a carefully crafted research
design.
Day-to-day practices and all that they entail are the materialization
of human conditions. Relations among the varied, heterogeneous actors
means paying attention to social as well as material and semiotic dimen-
sions of human experiences. Considering the role of nonhuman actors,
which are not limited to material objects only but also include affects and
composite “becomings” such as events, sensitize us to a more nuanced
way of thinking. Nuanced thinking reflects the “real” experiences of our
daily lives, through our process of thought, our subjectivities and actions,
and in the ways we interact with the outer and inner worlds. Incor-
porating these elements into research is what has been so effective and
groundbreaking in critical drug studies. Understanding the role of the
drug itself—the places in which drug use happens, the events through
which using drugs become assemblages of practices, affects, and bodily
experiences—makes studying drugs and recovery from drugs a complex
and contingent inquiry.
Scholars in critical alcohol and other drugs field have done important
work in establishing and advancing ontological research approaches to
account for the sensitivity to nuances. This literature shows that tackling
sociomaterial relations has direct implications for drug policy and prac-
tice in the professional and research fields. Thinking in this way demands
that research inquiry looks into how recovery comes to be, ontolog-
ically. It means thinking in composites, ensembles, and assemblages.
Assemblages mean to position recovery in relation to other entities, both
human and nonhuman, and to consider the role of affects, spaces, bodies,
and the heterogeneity of their relations with each other (Duff, 2014).
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2
Materialist Thinking in Critical Recovery
Studies
Materialist thinking in recovery studies, within both mental health and

addiction research, remains a niche area of interest. In recent decades,
materialist thinking has seen a new rise in humanities and social sciences.
The renewed wave of materialism is about learning how to trace the
assembling of entities that form into an object marking a return to the
scientific roots of materialist thinking (Latour, 2007). Unlike the idealist,
Marxist kind, this materialism should not ignore the technicality of the
mechanism, its functions, and heterogeneity of the elements—human
and nonhuman—assembled in it (Latour, 2007). The “new” materialism
means a “theoretical and practical ‘turn to matter’” (Fox & Alldred, 2018:
para 1). It is no longer the agent or the action that is the matter of
interest, but the materiality and the process through which agent and
actions emerge and become. Materialists insist that it is no longer the
definitions that social scientists need to provide, but detailed descriptions
of heterogeneous collectives, movements and translations (Latour, 2005).
The post-human, materialist thinking has caused a turn from “matters of
fact to matters of concern” (Latour, 2004), hence, the “new” materialism
is a call to focus on “matter” instead of “social,” requiring a distinction
“between differently composed materialities and various complexities of
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 21
A. Sultan, Recovering Assemblages,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1235-1_2
22 A. Sultan
conjunctions between bodies—in which the distinction between animate

and inanimate bodies may play a crucial role” (Lemke, 2015: 15). This
means sensitization toward agency and power of nonhuman entities in
producing our everyday lives.
This materialist thinking has already proven itself to be important in
shifting the role of critical social drug research onto a path of more
elaborate science and at the same time, of more advocacy for policy
changes (e.g., Fomiatti et al., 2018). Formed by “new” materialisms, crit-
ical drug studies depart from traditional symbolic interactionist ontology
and allow a disparate view of context, actors, and social forces that are
believed to constitute drug use (Hart, 2015). Materialist and critical drug
studies focus around drug-use patterns, spaces, and events, and remains
a niche area of research, making the same thinking in terms of recovery
even rarer.
Despite the challenges, a combination of ANT with other social
theories—which also paved the way for actor-network and assemblage
thinking—is also a way of following relations and associations into social-
scientific inquiry (Müller, 2015). Such a combination is not new and has
been employed by a number of social drug researchers, yielding impor-
tant contributions. For example, Törrönen and Tigerstedt (2018) used
ANT to analyze addiction stories to explore how “attachments,” “trans-
lations,” “mediators,” and heterogeneous actors can yield results different
from that of meta bio-psychosocial theories. With ANT, the authors
analyzed biographical narrative stories by focusing on multiple actors
that create “addiction assemblages,” eventually maintaining or disrupting
them by attachments they form. The study shows that as long as attach-
ments remain stable, with most of their components continuing the
relations, the assemblage of addiction or abstinence will continue to exist
and will disrupt if attachments rupture. Outside of an attachment and
without its relations to other entities, a single object such as a syringe,
for example, remains a mere object unable to restore the context or
environment necessary for an event to occur (Vitellone, 2011).
The specific importance of materialist and post-human thinking in
social drug research is in decentralizing human agency and recognizing
the complexity of the heterogeneous nature of entities, wherein studying
agency of objects is also a way of reducing “error and false knowledge”
(Haraway, 1988: 593). For social drug research this means recognizing
the agency of alcohol and other drugs. The inference is that the agency
does not only lie in human-centered intentionality, considering there
are both material agency and social contours to it. Sociological studies
on use and addiction, paradoxically, have for the most part left the role
and the agency of alcohol or any other drug out of the analysis because
it did not comply with the traditional notion of “the social” (Demant,
2009: 26). In the later sections of this book, the analyses will also high-
light the vitality of giving agency—whether social, cultural, or purely
physiological—to alcohol and other drugs in discrete events. This onto-
logical turn visible in recent social drug studies has opened a new path in
understanding users’ experiences of both consumption and recovery, in
comparison to policy, research, and socio-cultural-natural environment.
This chapter reviews the central theories used to enmesh the research
objectives, methodological concerns, and data analysis methods in this
book. The chapter consists of three sections discussing (1) Actor-
Network-Theory (ANT) and the empirical philosophy of Latour; (2)
the concept of assemblage and assemblage thinking; and (3) ontological
politics among conceptual tools from Science and Technology Studies
(STS) regarding their role in today’s critical social drug research. First,
I argue that the recent interest in the use of ANT in social drug
research has important theoretical, practical, and political implications
in improving our understanding of knowledge production on drugs,
drug use, treatment, and recovery. Use of ANT in social drug research
brings forward the importance of recognizing the agency of drugs and
disseminating agency between human and nonhuman bodies in revealing
heterogeneous and fluid contexts. Following this I introduce the concept
of assemblage developed by the French philosopher Deleuze and his
long-time intellectual partner, psychoanalyst Guattari. Assemblages—
often referred to as a “bad” translation of French agencement —denote
both the process of heterogeneous bodies meshing together and the
created final product, an ensemble (DeLanda, 2016).
The core task of this book is to illuminate the diversity of recovery
processes, something that has received less attention in the scientific
literature. Given the complexities researchers underpin in relation to
24 A. Sultan
conceptualization and contextualization of recovery, as well as the polit-

ical concerns surrounding harm reduction and treatment policies, there
is a need for studies stressing the diverse settings in which the process
occurs and transforms. One of the ways of addressing this gap is to focus
on the “nonhuman vectors of recovery” (Duff, 2014: 94).
The idea of nonhuman actors plays a key role in conceptualizing
recovery as a composite of multiple, heterogeneous bodies. The utmost
value of assemblage thinking, complemented by ANT, within the scope
of this book is an attempt to escape and go beyond the binaries such
as of abstinence/recovery, drug use/addiction, healthy/diseased, indi-
vidual/context, etc. This serves as an argument that recovery can be
experienced in multiple ways, shifting between the two “ends,” trans-
forming as well as decomposing. Next, I turn to the works of Law
and Mol in order to expand on multiplicity and plurality of recovery
realities. In this discussion, I attempt to show how different works of
recovery enacted in different contexts produce multiple realities of the
phenomenon. This argumentation line is supported by Mol’s ideation
on “options” of choice for performativity (1999). These are constituents
of Law’s and Mol’s ontological politics—a concept bridging the ontology
in its classical understanding of existing reality, and politics as in a possi-
bility of enacting or performing other ways of reality. This has specific
implications to a comparative design of the research, with a choice of
contrasting contexts in which the work of recovery is done. The discus-
sion revolves around different practices and how we as researchers can
see multiple ways of performing recovery through practice and schol-
arship. Toward the end, the chapter also briefly mentions some other
analytical tools from STS that will be used in the final analysis chapter.
All of the above-presented theoretical approaches offer an interconnected
image as in emergence of ontological turn conceived in multiplicities
and networks. After presenting each section separately, the chapter then
summarizes an integrated use of the theories and emerging logic within
the framework of this book.
Most definitions of recovery indicate an unclear commencement point
from where a process developed into a “loss” of something that was
present before. Thinking of mental health and addiction, when assuming
a preceding material form, entity, or mode of existence, broad divisions
to “before and after” cast aside the immanence 1 of the ontological state
of being (Latour, 2013). Restoring something also automatically implies
that something stays unchanged and can be returned into “possession
or control” in the same way it used to be; it forefronts the stasis of
a given state before recovery which can be presumably restored back.
Additionally, it rejects the idea that recovery and the state of being that
preceded it—whatever that might be—is/was made and remade in prac-
tice (Fraser et al., 2014). But researchers are still unclear whether recovery
is a process, an event, a lifetime commitment, or part of one’s iden-
tity, and more over, the divide between psychological-neurobiological
discourse and sociology.
This lack of definition potentially slows down the progress on many
fronts, holding off interdisciplinary consensual collaboration (Laudet,
2007). In search of definitions, scholars also agree that qualitative studies
oriented at individual meanings of recovery contribute less to clarity
of the term (Timpson et al., 2016). Existing normative definitions of
recovery, usually defined across formal and informal dimensions, has
informed the majority of medical, neurobiological, and psychological
research. In light of this uncertainty, the question arises of how differing
perspectives, coming from a variety of social theories, are helpful in
promoting the concept’s usefulness. Addressing these questions, White
(2007) summarizes the so far definitional and conceptual questions
around the term into four parts: “(a) recovery as lived experiences by
individuals and families, (b) recovery experience as the connecting tissue
within communities of recovery, (c) recovery as an outcome that can
be measured by scientists and those responsible for monitoring and
evaluating behavioral health care systems, and (d) recovery as both an
organizing vision/goal and a benchmark of accountability for complex
service systems” (p. 230).
While economic, political, and contextual aspects of drug use have
been addressed in a wide range of research, there is not a similar density
on recovery questions. The use of drugs has for centuries been the
central focus across different contexts, political and social discourses,
1 Unlike Deleuze, Latour focuses on only one aspect of immanence, at least in his discussion of
transcendence, to highlight that even the constant interruptions, no matter how “smooth” they
become over time, are part of immanence, adding with it a paradoxical nature to the term.
26 A. Sultan
whereas recovery movements emerged and spread, mostly across the

Western countries, only from the mid-1930s onward. It began with
the establishment of the AA movement in the USA (Travis, 2010),
followed decades later in form of policy in 1998 with the first Recov-
ering Community Support Program under the Clinton administration,
and recovery-oriented systems of care (ROSC) from the late 2000s in
the UK (Humphreys & Lembke, 2014). This brief review of the history
of the recovery movement shows the shift from an acute elimination
paradigm toward expansion and inclusion (White & Kurtz, 2006).
Secondly, with the emergence of harm reduction and critical socio-
political movement against criminalization, recovery and treatment
acquire a rather marginal status, portrayed now as reinforcing addiction
stigma and neoliberal discourses of “healthy and responsible citizen-
ship” (Fomiatti et al., 2018). Despite the renewed attention on recovery
and with such phenomenon called “new” recovery that focuses on indi-
vidual capacities, questions with regard to young people’s recovery and its
meaning across various contexts remain a relatively understudied area.
Meanwhile, emerging debates in critical drug studies are suggestive of
a similar situation of unclarity, with researchers questioning the validity
of the addiction concept (Fraser et al., 2014). These discussions rise
from the value-laden and moralizing effects that the term carries and its
increased medicalization in the West through brain-disease models (e.g.,
Adams, 2016; Bourgois, 2000; Farrugia & Fraser, 2017). In considering
their complex interrelationship, it is not perhaps surprising that the two
concepts—recovery and addiction—still lack an unequivocal definition.
The most mutually agreed aspect of recovery, among addiction profes-
sionals and in public health discourse, is the allocation of a long-term and
individual-oriented meaning to it. In comparison to this view of recovery,
treatment is viewed as a rather short-term intervention primarily aiming
at physical abstinence (Laudet, 2007; White, 2007), while terms such as
“cessation” or “quitting”—often used by service users themselves—indi-
cate a more solution-oriented, practical focus (White & Kurtz, 2006: 9).
Due to the contrast that the term recovery inherently carries, it often
means the contrary of a “normal” health condition, and in cases with
drugs, it also implies that the recovering subject has a personal history
of drug use (Keane, 2000). Assumption of a history is suggestive of
a progress in drug use—an escalation, loss of control, addiction—that

eventually generates a need to seek recovery. The disclosure and a need
for potentially long-term professional intervention exposes vulnerability;
in this, recovery is said to carry stigmatizations of its own (Best & Laudet,
2010; White & Kurtz, 2006; Yates, 2011).
Broadly, treatment defines pharmacological, medical, and therapeutic
interventions for abstinence and recovery purposes. Its various imple-
mentation methods and target-group orientations make it difficult
to give more specific definitions that would appeal to practitioners,
researchers, and policy-makers at once. Throughout the book, the term
treatment refers to formal interventions and clinical supervision, whereas
recovery—as the main focus of the work—is discussed through a range
of contextual dimensions attending to integrated conceptual and analyt-
ical tools. Its meanings adhere to a wider range of experiences including
clinical interventions but not limited to them.
Best and Laudet (2010: 2) offer a comprehensive understanding of the
recovery process in the following way: “the essence of recovery is a lived
experience of improved life quality and a sense of empowerment; […] the
principles of recovery focus on the central ideas of hope, choice, freedom
and aspiration.” While considering multifaceted experiences, this defi-
nition mainly focuses on the relational affects, principally emphasizing
the interdependence of a recovering person with other humans. Most of
Best’s work centers on the accumulative character of recovery, where a
recovering person collects different resources, or as Best refers to it, capi-
tals. These resources must be accumulated together to create a sustained
experience and long-term duration of recovery, eventually transforming
into one main capital of recovery. The recovery capital is not a new term
per se, emerging from a collaboration of researchers and medical profes-
sionals in various health areas such as disability, mental health, and drug
use. In this sense, recovery capital conveys a composite meaning appli-
cable to the process itself and not to an individual experience of it. An
alternative and pilot definition views recovery as a “voluntarily main-
tained lifestyle characterized by sobriety, personal health, and citizenship”
(The Betty Ford Institute Consensus Panel, 2007: 222). A few years later,
following the definition above, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health
28 A. Sultan
Services Administration (SAMHSA, 2012) in the USA offered ten prin-

ciples that would characterize recovery from both mental ill health and
addiction:
• Recovery emerges from hope.

• Recovery is person-driven.
• Recovery occurs via many pathways.
• Recovery is holistic.
• Recovery is supported by peers and allies.
• Recovery is supported through relationships and social networks.
• Recovery is culturally based and influenced.
• Recovery is supported by addressing trauma.
• Recovery involves individual, family, and community strengths and
responsibility.
• Recovery is based on respect.
This characterization summarizes most of the contemporary ideas

around individual recovery, with more models advancing these criteria
to include community-based support and individual strengths-based
approaches. As Duff (2016) argues in his study of recovery atmospheres,
the materiality of everyday life and practices of persons (self-) defined
to be in recovery tend to be disregarded in such definitions. Notable is
the fact that both mental health and addiction recovery are addressed
together in most policy documents, indicating orientation toward well-
being without specification of individual and material ingredients of
these definitions in practice. It simultaneously blurs the variety of forces
that shape mental ill health and drug use differently, suggesting interre-
latedness and even causal relationships between the two health matters.
Similar results have been recently developed in drug-use recovery, partic-
ularly stressing the importance of recovery network and community
connections (Best et al., 2017). As Duff argues, without describing their
real, immediate experiences of how these features of hope and optimism,
connectedness or other components are experienced and what affects,
and material forces makes them part of the recovery, the Connectedness,
Hope and optimism, Identity, Meaning and purpose, and Empower-
ment (CHIME) model, however, offers a possible experience of the real
(Duff, 2016: 61). This discussion on mental health recovery identifies

important developments toward acceptance, inclusion, and communal
support. While chronicity of mental health recovery is now being
rejected in recent studies (Duff, 2016), chronicity of drug-use recovery
is being continuously reified in the “lifelong” and “unfinished” descrip-
tions of recovery. Coming from this perspective, Duff then develops an
assemblage approach to recovery from mental illness to show how real
experiences coalesce and become through affective, social, and material
atmospheres. Taking it one step further, he also argues for the impor-
tance of considering broader social, political, and economic contexts in
shaping the deeply personal, individual processes of recovery. Expanding
on these discussions, it might be useful to explore how these domains
might be understood in drug-use recovery.
Researchers long ago emphasized the need for more research that
would compare various, individual experiences of recovery in different
circumstances (Blomqvist, 2002). A particular interest here also lies in
the paths or ways of recovering or undergoing recession without formal
treatment (Blomqvist, 1996). This call for comparative research emerges
from the lack of consensual understanding and implementation of treat-
ment strategies, statistical data indicating high levels of relapse cases,
and visible ineffectiveness of short-term clinical methods. As the research
grows, more scholars recognize the importance of implementing complex
and relational theoretical perspectives in furthering understandings about
drug-use treatment and recovery.
As is known from the history of anthropological research,
most comparative studies undertaking comparative design have been
conducted by Western researchers, oftentimes involving the Western
perspective on ‘social norms and values’ studied in another country
(Alasuutari, 1996). This type of analysis would prevail in studies
comparing Western nations to non-Western ones, assuming the former
as a standard. In recent developments, many ethnographers and other
qualitative researchers have challenged this established perspective by
demonstrating the limitations of overlooking “minority” worlds through
the lenses of the “majority.” Research studies indicate the importance
of local contexts and features as not amenable to comparison, espe-
cially, when looking from a Western perspective. The discussions on
30 A. Sultan
the “minority” and “majority” world division affecting the conceptu-

alizations of research problems are especially crucial in the context of
youth (Bacchi, 2012; Woodhead, 2006) and the ways young people
manage drug use and recovery in the non-Western part of the world.
This division, however, seems especially unfitting amidst the “precarious
young people” debates that, when put in comparison to local contexts
across cultural and national settings, loses its argumentative validity
(Farrugia, 2018). For example, in showing the different understandings
of youth, Moore (2002) writes that almost all anthropological studies
used the same underlying “conceptual straightjacket” method with which
to “measure” youth in non-Western countries. Such a view of “Western”
and “non-Western” is a restrictive dyad. This has been widely known
as relativism, which also has been central to debates about its use and
harm to cultural studies and science. To this end, Edgerton concludes
that relativism has done more to “counter racism and ethnocentrism”
than harm the progress of science (1992: 22), with a nod to its impor-
tant role in demystifying the Western civilizations as the “modular bay”
to anything outside of it. The critical perspectives on relativism and the
call to abandon the dyadic approach is seen as the other radical end of
comparisons, namely, universalism (Stengers, 2011; also see Law, 2004).
Although the best attempt is made not to pursue this divisive compar-
ison, in this book occasional parallels between drug discourses of the
West and other countries is drawn to elaborate on how relativism can
be overcome by transcending the notion of comparison across individual
and local contexts.
Latour and Actor-Network-Theory

It is difficult to pinpoint Latour’s place in scientific discipline as he has
been defined, among many different labels, as ethnographer, sociologist,
philosopher of science, and even as empirical philosopher. To understand
his later and most prominent influences, such as ANT and the analytical
approaches used in this book, it is important to take a brief look at his
earlier works.
Latour’s biggest contribution to social sciences stems from his interest

in the production of scientific facts for which he, together with Science
and Technology Studies (STS) scholar Steve Woolgar, undertook an
ethnographic study observing scientists in their laboratories. In their
book Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts, the authors
show that the production of scientific knowledge is a result of strenuous
iterative procedures of documenting failures and achievements of empir-
ical work until a “fact” is established. They wrote that recognizing this
process and reporting it transparently is necessary for the verity of how
science works (Latour & Woolgar, 1986). Authors wanted to debunk the
common myth that scientific discoveries emerge overnight (e.g., resem-
bling the story of Newton’s apple); for to obtain an undeniable fact in
the end, scientific activity first of all renders the invisible visible and
then makes what became visible progressively obvious. Social scientists
have to privilege detailed descriptions, reasons Latour, to avoid the vague,
“macro” explanations (2014).
In STS, technical descriptions often create the explanation of the social
phenomenon. Especially because this method is designed to fill in the
gaps created by the others that neglect actants, the intermediaries, medi-
ators, and entities left behind the deliberately selected chunks. This later
led to a myriad of descriptive, technical texts on matters of social science
inquiry.
For Latour, most of classic and contemporary sociology consists of
reified knowledge and perspectives that have been unquestioned for
such a long time that they became indisputable “black boxes”—tech-
nically referring to a phenomenon that is too complex to understand
its functions (Latour, 1987; Winner, 1993). Second, Latour vigorously
challenges dichotomous relations, particularly that of subject/object,
nature/culture, and agency/structure. Finally, sociology, he defends,
should not be about the social relations or ties, but associations,
networks, and entanglements (Latour, 2005). This has direct implica-
tions to the ways traditional qualitative data has been analyzed in this
book. This start into sociology of sciences produced a large body of work
questioning the ways social sciences investigate and yield results. His next
take, thus, together with other philosophers of science, has been on the
“social” aspect of the scientific inquiry (Latour, 2005). Latour divides the
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However, from whatever cause arising, we had the full benefit of the
peal.
“We got to our rural retreat about half-past nine, both the men-
servants attending us on horseback. At ten o’clock your old Mumpsa
[the child’s pet name for her mother] laid the first brick, and placed
under it a medal struck in commemoration of the centenary of the
Revolution of 1688. Your darling father then placed another for
himself, and a third for his beloved treasure, which he made Toney
put her foot upon; and after the little rogue had done so, you would
have laughed to have seen how she wagged her tail, and nodded
her head upon it, as much as to say she was very proud of being
admitted to have, not a finger, but a foot, in the business. The men
worked merrily on until two o’clock, and then repaired to the public-
house, where two legs of mutton, and bread, beer, and potatoes
were provided for them. There they enjoyed themselves for the rest
of the day, and this morning cheerily resumed their labours.”
Having thus impressed the natives, including the landlord of “The
Bell,” with a sense of the importance of the new owner about to
come among them, Dr. Mitford completed the business by
substituting the name “Bertram House” for that of “Grazeley Court,”
the reason for which, did the curiosity of the neighbouring aristocracy
cause them to inquire, was to be discovered in the fact that he was a
scion of the Mitfords of Bertram Castle, Bertram being the original
and ancient name of the family.
Judging by the very scant records of this period at our command, it
would appear that the erection of Bertram House, and its completion
to Dr. Mitford’s satisfaction, must have occupied nearly four years.
This would give Miss Mitford a clear three years of life among the
mild excitements which Reading then offered before taking up
residence at Grazeley in a district which she was to immortalize—the
term surely needs no justification for its use—and in which she was
destined, save for a few notable occasions when duty or
considerations of health called her away for short periods, to live out
her life to the end.
Her introduction to the gaieties of this respectable Borough took
place in the August of 1803, when she would be nearly sixteen. The
occasion was the annual Race Ball, at which function it was the time-
honoured custom of the race-steward to dance with the young ladies
then making their début, an ordeal almost as trying to the débutante
in those prim and decorous days as a presentation at Court,
especially if the steward happened to be a total stranger to her.
Writing to her mother, towards the end of her school career and
commenting on this, Miss Mitford added—possibly to gain courage
from the inditing—“I think myself very fortunate that Mr. Shaw
Lefevre[8] will be steward next year, for by that time I shall hope to
know him well enough to render the undertaking of dancing with him
much less disagreeable.” In this connexion we venture to suggest
that on this occasion Mr. Shaw Lefevre would have full hands, when
we remember that even at this comparatively early date Miss
Mitford’s figure had already assumed generous proportions and that
she was short of stature into the bargain.
Naturally enough, the conclusion of school life and the re-
commencement of life at home afforded the young girl the fullest
opportunities for observing, noting and commenting on persons and
events, a pastime in which she delighted. Her pictures of the
Reading of her day are notable alike for their quaint fancies as for
their fidelity. Her picture of the town—which she disguises under the
name of Belford Regis—as viewed from the southern heights of
Whitley, is one to which all true lovers of the old town turn with
pleasure even to-day.
“About this point,” she says, “is perhaps to be seen the very best
view of Belford, with its long ranges of modern buildings in the
outskirts, mingled with picturesque old streets; the venerable towers
of St. Stephen’s [St. Mary’s] and St. Nicholas [St. Laurence’s]; the
light and tapering spire of St. John’s [St. Giles’]; the huge monastic
ruins of the abbey; the massive walls of the county gaol; the great
river winding along like a thread of silver; trees and gardens mingling
amongst all; and the whole landscape enriched and lightened by the
dropping elms of the foreground, adding an elusive beauty to the
picture, by breaking the too formal outline and veiling just exactly
those parts which most require concealment. Nobody can look at
Belford from this point, without feeling that it is a very English and
very charming scene; and the impression does not diminish on
further acquaintance.”
Continuing, she compares the old romantic structures in which our
ancestors delighted—now, unhappily, nearly all demolished—with,
what she calls, the handsome and uniform buildings which are now
the fashion; and she remarks on the rapid growth which the town
was then making, “having recently been extended to nearly double
its former size.” What would she have said, we wonder, could she
have foreseen the Reading of to-day with its palatial polished-
granite-fronted business emporiums controlled from the Metropolis
by great limited liability companies whose insatiable appetites are
devouring, as their policy of grab is choking, the life from the old-time
burgesses; burgesses who gloried in their town and whom their town
took pleasure in honouring; men whose places are now filled by
battalions of shopmen whose fixity of tenure is so doubtful as to
preclude them from taking any part or interest, however slight, in the
town which shelters them? And, in regard to the extension which she
names with so much pride, how she would gasp with astonishment
had she been told that Whitley, from which she viewed the pleasant
scene, would be turned into dreary streets of uniformly built villas,
never deviating by so much as half a brick from the monotony of the
usual “desirable residence”; that the old limits of the town, beyond
which she could easily descry the panoramic revel of field and
meadow, would be extended for nearly two miles each way, almost
indeed to her beloved “Our Village,” and that the population of
16,000—each unit placidly pursuing its fairly prosperous calling—
would be transformed, seventy years later, into a struggling,
perspiring, more or less harassed army of 88,000, the majority not
daring, though they would not admit the stern impeachment, to call
their bodies their own.
“The good town of Belford,” she later remarks, “swarmed of course
with single ladies ... and was the paradise of ill-jointured widows and
portionless old maids. They met on the tableland of gentility, passing
their mornings in calls at each other’s houses, and their evenings in
small tea-parties, seasoned with a rubber or a pool, and garnished
with the little quiet gossiping (call it not scandal, gentle reader!)
which their habits required.... The part of the town in which they
chiefly congregated, the lady’s quartier, was one hilly corner of the
parish of St. Nicholas, a sort of highland district, all made up of short
rows, and pigmy places, and half-finished crescents, entirely
uncontaminated by the vulgarity of shops,” chosen, it is suggested,
“perhaps because it was cheap, perhaps because it was genteel—
perhaps from a mixture of both causes.” A kindly satire this, and
interesting because it points so conclusively to a certain backwater
near the Forbury, and under the shadow of the church of St.
Laurence, which will be easily recognized by many who remember
how it retained its character as a settlement for prim old ladies, of the
kind described by Miss Mitford, until within quite recent times.
“Of the public amusements of the town, as I remember it at bonny
fifteen,” she continues, “these were sober enough. Ten years before,
clubs had flourished; and the heads of houses had met once a week
at the King’s Arms for the purpose of whist-playing; whilst the ladies,
thus deserted by their liege lords, had established a meeting at each
other’s mansions on club-nights, from which, by way of retaliation,
the whole male sex was banished,” save one. “At the time, however,
of which I speak, these clubs had passed away; and the public
diversions were limited to an annual visit from a respectable
company of actors, the theatre being, as is usual in country places,
very well conducted and exceedingly ill attended; to biennial
concerts, equally good in their kind, and rather better patronised; and
to almost weekly incursions from itinerant lecturers on all the arts
and sciences, and from prodigies of every kind, whether three-year-
old fiddlers or learned dogs. There were also balls in their spacious
and commodious townhall, which seemed as much built for the
purposes of dancing as that of trying criminals. Public balls there
were in abundance; but at the time of which I speak they were of
less advantage to the good town of Belford than any one, looking at
the number of good houses and of pretty young women, could well
have thought possible.”
These few extracts—space forbids a larger selection—are
sufficient, we think, to prove how keen was the observing eye and
how critical was the mind of Miss Mitford at this time when,—to use
her own phrase—“I was a very young girl and, what is more to the
purpose, a very shy one, so that I mixed in none of the gaieties,” a
statement which seems to lend support to the current saying that
“the onlooker sees most of the game.”
So far we have dealt with the Reading life as dating from 1797, but
it is important to note that Miss Mitford speaks of a short residence in
the town when she was but four years of age, and this would give us
the year 1791. Unfortunately no proof for or against this is available,
so far as we know, and we should scarcely have thought it worthy of
mention but for another statement which she makes in her
Recollections the authenticity of which it would be well to at least,
attempt to clear up.
The statement has reference to the interest which Samuel Taylor
Coleridge evinced in one of her earliest literary efforts, Christina; or,
The Maid of the South Seas, when it was being prepared for press at
about the year 1811. This interest she ascribes to “Mr. Coleridge’s
kind recognition of my father’s exertions” in his behalf and relates to
that romantic period of the poet’s life when, in the December of
1793, he suddenly enlisted as a common soldier in the 15th Light
Dragoons under the nom de guerre of “Silas Tomkyn Cumberbatch.”
We have it on good authority that on December 4, 1793, he was
sent, with other raw recruits, to be drilled with his regiment, then
garrisoned at Reading, from which date until his discharge on April
10, 1794, he clearly proved his unfitness for the calling of a man-at-
arms.
The story of his discharge has been variously related, but all are
agreed that his identity was revealed by his being overheard by
certain of his officers reciting Greek lines, to say nothing of the polish
which, scholar as he was, he could not disguise. The circumstance
was sufficiently unique in those days—the gentleman ranker was a
growth of later date—to occasion inquiries, and these resulted in
communications with his friends, who came, identified, and bought
him out. One of these officers was Captain Ogle, eldest son of that
Dean of Winchester to whom, as we have noted in the earliest
chapter of this book, Dr. Mitford was on the visit which resulted in his
introduction to Miss Russell.
Miss Mitford’s account of the event is somewhat circumstantial, for
she relates that as Dr. Ogle was on a short visit to the Mitfords, the
opportunity of calling upon his father was gladly embraced by the
son, who, in the course of conversation, recorded the unusual
incident of the learned recruit, with the result that “one of the
servants waiting at table” was “induced to enlist in his place,” and the
“arrangement for his [Coleridge’s] discharge took place at my
father’s house at Reading.”
The dates relative to Coleridge’s enlistment and discharge are
incontrovertible, therefore in view of the lack of evidence to support
the idea of the Mitfords being in Reading in 1794, we are inclined to
doubt—as others have doubted—the authenticity of Miss Mitford’s
narrative, suggesting rather, that having heard this romantic story,
many years after—possibly from the lips of Captain Ogle himself—
she readily assumed, with the licence of literary folk in general, that
the incident took place as she recorded it.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] He represented Reading in Parliament, 1802-1820.
CHAPTER VI
BERTRAM HOUSE
Bertram House was at last finished and the beginning of 1806 saw
the Mitfords in residence. In the matter of furnishing the Doctor had
spared no expense, everything being new and of the latest pattern,
in fact the best that a fashionable London upholsterer could supply.
Of the pictures we know that the walls were well covered and that
the collection included a Gainsborough, a pair of female heads by
Greuze, and a portrait of the Doctor by Opie. We have already seen,
in Mrs. Mitford’s description of the stone-laying ceremony, that they
were attended by “the two men-servants on horseback”; this hints at
a fairly complete retinue having been installed at the Reading house,
but it was considerably augmented when the arrangements were
completed at Grazeley. Appearances counted for much in the district
and the Doctor was not the man to let slip such a grand opportunity
for ostentatious display.
His hospitality was profuse and indiscriminate, resulting in a
house-warming which extended over quite a lengthy period. As an
incentive—had he need of one—Dr. Mitford had recently been
appointed as one of the County magistrates, a tribute of appreciation
from the Whigs, of whose cause he was an earnest partizan, which
gave him an immediate rise in social status.
In time, of course, the family settled down to a more or less
ordered form of life, so ordered indeed that the Doctor created as
many excuses as possible to cover his frequent journeys to Town
and his clubs. There was sport in plenty to be had in the
neighbourhood, and of this the Doctor took full advantage, being a
familiar figure around the countryside with his gun and spaniels.
Then, too, there were the coursing meetings—the famous meetings
at Ilsley and private matches arranged between friends—none of
which were considered complete unless the Doctor were present or
his famous kennel represented. Throughout Miss Mitford’s letters,
occasionally to her father and often to friends, there are frequent
references to the greyhounds whose names, in accordance with a
custom prevalent then and still fashionable, all began with the letter
M in token of their ownership. Thus, to name only a few, we have
Mia, Manx, Marmion (a notable dog this, with an equally notable son
of the same name), Mogul, Miller, Moss-Trooper, and Mopy. For all of
these Miss Mitford ever exhibited the greatest affection, and in those
cases where a spaniel grew too old to follow the gun or a greyhound
too stiff to be matched, an asylum under Miss Mitford’s immediate
eye and care was immediately provided, and the creature was
henceforth looked upon as her own.
Taking advantage of this motherliness to dumb animals her father
frequently handed over to her some specially valuable dog from
whose later exploits as a courser he expected much. Apparently,
however, the real reason for the supposed gift was not disclosed,
with the result that when the dog was eventually removed the little
mistress gave vent to her annoyance in no measured tones.
“It is a most extraordinary thing,” she says in one communication
to her father, “that I never can have a dog that I like but you
immediately take it from me and burthen me with the care of some
detestable brute whom you in your eternal caprice fancy a good one.
Observe, however, that in giving up my own darling Mordor, I bargain
that that sulky, ungrateful, mangy beast Marmion shall be sent off as
soon as you come home, and that I shall again have my sweet
Marian to pet and comfort me.”
This was not, of course, a serious outburst, but merely the
explosion of what she doubtless considered a truly righteous
indignation, for, although she was no sportswoman, her love for her
father gave her an interest in his pursuits, and she shared with him
to the full the joy of triumph and the sorrow of defeat, while to
disparage the Mitford kennel was to offer her a personal affront. On
the other hand, she was quick to convey to the Doctor any item of
praise which she overheard or might have addressed to her. “We
called yesterday at the Fawcetts’, and the old General said he had
kept greyhounds and seen many thousands, but had never had an
idea of perfect and consummate beauty until he saw her” [a
reference, in a letter to her father, to Mia, one of the hounds].
She had a strong dislike to equestrian exercise—the rides of
babyhood across the Alresford downs with her father could not count
in this connexion—and although every inducement was offered her
to ride, an inglorious fall from a donkey quickly settled her
convictions as to her horsemanship, and her one and only riding-
habit was forthwith converted into a winter-gown. Strictly speaking,
the greater portion of her time was spent at home with her mother,
receiving visitors or lying for hours at a time on the sofa, where she
would devour a great quantity of books at a pace which, having
regard to the extraordinary knowledge she imbibed from her reading,
was truly astonishing.[9] At other times the little green chariot, their
favourite equipage, would be ordered out, calls would be returned
and the drive be possibly extended to Reading, where there would
always be plenty of shopping to do and calls to be made on the old
neighbours and friends who would have the latest news from Town
or the latest gossip of their immediate circle to retail.
With a desire to augment his income, which must have been
seriously depleted by the building operations and by the subsequent
reckless expenditure on the household, the Doctor now began to
indulge in a series of hazardous enterprises, which, with all a
gambler’s insistence, he pursued intently the while they dragged him
deeper and deeper into the mire. One of these was an extensive
speculation in coal in which he engaged with a brother of M. St.
Quintin. For this he supplied the whole of the capital in expectation of
a return of £1,500 a year, but the whole thing was a failure and, with
the exception of about £300, the capital was lost. Another
Frenchman, a man of ingenious ideas but no money wherewith to
put them to practical use, found a ready supporter in the Doctor, who
was induced to advance £5,000 on the strength of a paper scheme.
This man was the Marquis J. M. F. B. de Chabannes, and his
scheme, a supposed improved method for the lighting and heating of
houses, was embodied in a booklet which he published in 1803 with
the comprehensive title of Prospectus d’un Projet pour la
Construction de Nouvelles Maisons, Dont tous les calculs de détails
procureront une très-grande Economie, et beaucoup de
Jouissances. Unfortunately for its promoters, the scheme did not
catch on with the public, the Marquis returned to France and the
deluded Doctor continued for years to spend good money in the
hope of recovering that which was irrevocably lost by suing the
Marquis in the French courts, efforts which were all vain.
Meanwhile his fever for gambling grew apace and his absences
from home were more and more frequent and prolonged, and the
two women, being left much to themselves, conceived the notion of
arranging and copying out for the press a collection of verses
composed by the reverend father of Mrs. Mitford, Dr. Russell. They
took considerable pains with this, to which was added a special
preface by Mrs. Mitford, and when the packet was ready it was
forwarded to Dr. Mitford, in Town, with a request that he should find a
publisher and get as much as he could for it. Unfortunately, the
sanguine editors were disappointed, for no publisher sufficiently
enterprising could be found to accept the manuscript, although
sundry extracts did subsequently find a certain publicity within the
pages of the Poetical Register.
Following closely upon this effort, and in the May of 1806, Miss
Mitford went for a few days on a visit to London as the guest of
Monsieur and Madame St. Quintin, her old schoolmaster and his
wife. A short round of festivities had been arranged for her benefit,
including a visit to the Exhibition of Water Colours, evenings at the
theatres and, what appears to have been a great treat for the
impressionable Miss, some hours of two days which were spent at
Westminster Hall looking on at the trial of Lord Melville[10] and
listening to the speeches, and for which the Doctor, then in Town and
staying at Richardson’s Hotel in Covent Garden, had procured
tickets. She had now been absent from London for over three years
and, no doubt, extracted a great deal of pleasure from her visit and
its reunion with Fanny Rowden and Victoire St. Quintin, M. St.
Quintin’s sister, with both of whom, together with the Doctor, the
round of sight-seeing was enjoyed.
Mrs. Mitford stayed at home, but was kept well-posted in all the
news by the inevitable letters, full of critical details, from her dutiful
daughter. From one of these, dated from Hans Place, May 12, 1806,
we quote:—
“I have much to tell you, but it can scarcely be compressed within
the bounds of a letter. On Thursday, after I wrote, Miss Ayrton, Miss
Carp, papa, and I went to the Exhibition. There are some
uncommonly fine pictures, and it is even better worth seeing than
last year. In the evening, Victoire, Miss A. and myself went with papa
to the play to see The Provoked Husband and The Forty Thieves.
Miss Duncan in Lady Townley is most admirable. I do not much
admire Elliston as her husband. The Forty Thieves is a very
magnificent spectacle, but nothing more; for the language and music
are equally vulgar and commonplace. On Friday morning we went to
Oxford Street. I was extravagant enough to give half a guinea for a
dress skirt for myself, which I wore the next day to the trial. We were
rather disappointed in Mr. Romilly.[11] The speech in itself was
beautiful beyond description; but he wants animation, and drops his
voice at the end of every sentence.... Miss Rowden, papa, and I are
going to see Henry the Eighth to-night, and we are going to
Westminster Hall to-morrow.... I shall hope to return Thursday or
Friday; for, though I am greatly amused here, I am never quite happy
without my dear, dear mother.”
Two days later this was followed by a still more characteristic
effusion. The second day at Westminster Hall decided her that: “Mr.
Romilly is charming and interesting; but my first and greatest
favourite is Mr. Whitbread. Mr. Plumer is rather an inelegant speaker,
though very animated. I have promised papa to write some verses to
Mr. Whitbread. He has even superseded Mr. Fox in my good graces.
I did not tell you, I believe, that I had the happiness of seeing Mr. Fox
mount his horse on Saturday. I shall never again contend for his
beauty. He was obliged to lean on two people, and looked so sallow
and pale in the face, and so unwieldy in person, that I am obliged to
yield our long-disputed point.” Rather hard on poor Mr. Fox, whom,
hitherto, this exuberant young person had worshipped as a hero,
even to the extent of removing her watch-stand from the head of her
bed that it might give place to a bust of this gentleman which the
Doctor had sent from Town. On this occasion it was a case of “Off
with the old love and on with the new” in double-quick time, for,
continuing, she says: “To make me amends my new favourite is what
even you would call exquisitely handsome; a most elegant figure,
and a voice which I could listen to with transport, even if he spoke in
an unknown language. Mr. Plumer attacked him with the most
virulent irony and ridicule; and Mr. W. stood with his face turned
towards him and leant upon the desk, smiling the whole time, with
the most fascinating good humour. You know I am always an
enthusiast; but at present it is impossible to describe the admiration I
feel for this exalted character.”
We quote these extracts with no thought of ridiculing the ardent
partisan, but as a fore-shadowing of that enthusiasm and that quick
impressibility which ever seemed to dominate Miss Mitford’s life;
characteristics which often led her into excesses of transport at the
discovery, or supposed discovery, of some noble trait in the
characters of those who came within her ken, only to be as quickly
repented of; often giving unintentional pain to others and resulting in
an infinitude of trouble and annoyance to herself. Despite this
temperamental defect, however, and while her friends looked on
amazed at her infidelity, there was one to whom she remained
unwaveringly faithful to the end, though this object of her great
affection was the least worthy of all who came into her life.
Mr. Whitbread, favoured man, was the immediate recipient of

some verses from his ardent admirer. They reached him, ten days
after his Westminster display of elegance and fortitude, through Dr.
Mitford, to whom they were posted from Bertram House under cover
of the following ingenuous letter: “May 24, 1806.—I claim great merit,
my dear darling, in sending you the enclosed lines, for I am not
satisfied with them; but I would sooner mortify my own vanity by
sending you bad verses, than break my promise by withholding
them. I have called them impromptu to excuse their incorrectness;
and though some may suspect them to be an impromptu fait à loisir,
you must not betray the secret. From a perfect consciousness of my
own enthusiasm, I have been so much afraid of saying too much,
that I have fallen into the opposite fault and said too little. However, I
had rather be thought anything but a flatterer, though it be in my
opinion impossible to flatter Mr. Whitbread; for what language can
equal his merits? Do not impute the faults and deficiencies in these
lines to my laziness; for I assure you they cost me an infinite deal of
trouble; but they are not good enough to show, and I had rather you
would return them to me immediately. At all events, let me know how
you like them, and what you have done with them.”
Not to be misled by the feigned artlessness of his daughter’s
concluding sentences, the Doctor, as we have said, passed on the
verses to Mr. Whitbread, who was pleased to acknowledge and
eulogise them; and since they deserve it we give them below:—
Impromptu on Hearing Mr. Whitbread Declare in
Westminster Hall, on Friday, May 16, 1806, that He
“Fondly Trusted His Name would Descend with Honour
to Posterity.”
The hope of Fame thy noble bosom fires,

Nor vain the hope thy ardent mind inspires;
In British breasts, whilst Purity remains,
Whilst Liberty her blest abode retains,
Still shall the muse of History proclaim
To future ages thy immortal name.
And while fair Scotia weeps her favoured son,
By place corrupted and by power undone,
England with pride her upright patriot sees,
And Glory’s brightest wreath to him decrees.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] A list kept as a check on the Circulating Library account for the
years 1806 to 1811 inclusive, is a sufficient indication of this, the
number for one month alone totalling fifty-five volumes and
ranging through Fiction, Belles-Lettres, Travel and Biography.
[10] Impeached for malversation in his office as Treasurer of the
Navy. The trial lasted sixteen days. Whitbread led for the
Impeachers; Plumer—afterwards Master of the Rolls—ably
defended and secured his acquittal.
[11] Sir Samuel Romilly, Solicitor-General.
CHAPTER VII
THE TRIP TO NORTHUMBERLAND
With a proper and increasing pride in his clever daughter, the Doctor
now conceived the idea of taking her with him on an extended trip
into Northumberland, thereby affording her some acquaintance with
the scenes amidst which his family had lived for generations, a trip
which would serve the double purpose of impressing the girl with a
sense of the importance of her ancestors and present relations and
of introducing her to the latter who, although they must have heard of
her, had never yet seen her.
The journey was begun on Saturday, September 20, 1806, the first
stage, that from Reading to London being by coach. From London
they travelled in the carriage of Nathaniel Ogle, who personally
conducted them to his own place in Northumberland, from which
they were to make their various excursions in the district. Mrs.
Mitford did not accompany them, but was kept well informed, as
usual, by her daughter.
The first letter is dated from Royston, September 21: “We had a
very long interval between the parting from my most beloved darling
and the leaving Reading. The coach was completely full; and it was
fortunate papa had secured a place on the box, where he continued
during the whole journey. The company in the inside had the merit of
being tolerably quiet; and I do not remember any conversation which
lasted longer than a minute. I, certainly, ought not to complain of
their silence, as I was more than equally taciturn, and scarcely spoke
during the whole way. I was quite low-spirited, but never less
fatigued by travelling. Both Mr. Joy and Dr. Valpy[12] met us before we
left Reading, and M. St. Quintin and Victoire met us at the Bath
Hotel. As soon as Victoire left me, I retired to bed, under the idea of
pursuing our journey early in the morning. It was, however, half-past
ten before Mr. Ogle got up, and we did not leave town till twelve. We
employed the interval in going to the bookseller’s for a Cobbett, and
bought a Cary’s Itinerary, an edition of Peter Pindar, and a few plays.
The Edition of P. P. which we bought cheap, remains in town; but the
others are our travelling companions. We went by Enfield to see
Mary Ogle, and finding them at dinner we dined at Mrs. Cameron’s;
we then changed horses at Waltham Cross; again at Wade’s Mill;
and are just arrived here, where we sleep to-night. Mr. Ogle is
extremely pleasant, and the carriage very convenient. We went the
two first stages on the box of the barouche. I need not tell you, my
dearest darling, that we felt nothing so much as the loss of your
society; and I have wished myself at home fifty times in the last
twenty-four hours, to be again with my dear mamma.”
Apart from the interest which, in these days, is always attached to
an old-time account of stage-travel the letter is interesting by reason
of the variety of literature purchased for perusal on the journey. The
Cobbett referred to would probably be Cobbett’s Political Register
(then being issued in parts), and intended for the Doctor’s personal
reading; he being not only an admirer but an intimate friend of the
outspoken reformer. Cary’s Itinerary was, of course, the well-known
road-book and constant companion of all who travelled in stage-
coach days; though why Miss Mitford was not content with her
dainty, green-leather-covered copy of Bowles’ Post-Chaise
Companion in two vols.—now a valued possession of the author’s—
is difficult to understand, unless it was overlooked in the hurry and
excitement of departure. Peter Pindar’s Works, then just completed
in five vols., would be a valuable addition to the library at home, but
the purchase of the plays is significant, proving the influence which
Fanny Rowden had exercised on the mind of her pupil, inculcating a
taste for the Drama which was to be of lasting importance.
The next letter is written from Little Harle Tower—a small place
about fourteen miles from Morpeth—and is dated Sunday Evening,
September 28.—
“I arrived here with Lady Charles,[13] about two hours since, my
dearest mamma; and I find from papa that in his letter to you to-night
he never mentioned that the irregularity of the post, which never
goes oftener than three times a week from hence, will prevent our
writing again till Wednesday, when we go to Sir William Lorraine’s,
and hope to get a frank from Colonel Beaumont, whom we are to
meet there. It is only by Lord Charles going unexpectedly to Morpeth
that I am able to write this, merely to beg you not to be alarmed at
not hearing oftener. I imagine papa has told you all our plans, which
are extremely pleasant. Lord and Lady Charles stay longer in the
country on purpose to receive us, and have put off their visit to
Alnwick Castle that they may take me there, as well as to Lord
Grey’s, Colonel Beaumont’s, and half a dozen other places.”
The reference in this letter to a “frank” is one which frequently
occurs in Miss Mitford’s correspondence. It was, as Sir Rowland Hill
once said, an “expedient for saving postage”—“discreditable shifts”
another writer called them. In the days before the institution of Penny
Postage—an event which put an end to “franking”—Members
of Parliament enjoyed the privilege of having their letters delivered
and despatched free of charge. To secure this, members had merely
to write their names on the covers to ensure free passage through
the post, and frequently furnished their friends with packets of franks
which were placed aside for use as occasion required. This latter
expedient was, of course, a flagrant abuse of the privilege, and in
one year it was computed that, had postage been paid on the
franked correspondence, the revenue would have been increased by
£170,000! In an endeavour to check this abuse it was enacted that
the whole superscription must be in the handwriting of the Member,
and that the frank was only available on the date (which it was
necessary to name) which was on the cover. While the regulation
certainly diminished the quantity of franking it did not put an end to
the use of the privilege by other than Members, to whom it became
the custom to despatch an accumulated batch of letters, intended for
a number of people, with explicit instructions as to their destinations.
The annoyance caused to Members, and the general confusion
which sometimes resulted from this practice, may be better imagined
than described. Miss Mitford herself gives us an amusing account of
the troubles and trials of those who both used and abused the
franking privilege, in her sketch on “The Absent Member,” in Belford
Regis.
In the next letter which Miss Mitford wrote we have a record of
some amusing table-talk, essentially feminine in character and
which, undoubtedly, greatly impressed the observant young person
who overheard it. It is addressed still from Little Harle Tower, dated
October 3, and after a short description of the scenery, and the mud
—which caused her to beg to be excused from such excursions in
the future—she relates an account of a dinner at Sir William
Lorraine’s at which Colonel and Mrs. Beaumont were of the party.—
“Mrs. B. was so polite as to express great regret that, as she was
going from home, she could not see us at her house, but hoped,
when next we came to Northumberland, we should come to see
them at Hexham Abbey. She is a very sweet woman.... Mrs. B. told
Lady Charles that they received last year a hundred thousand
pounds from their lead mines in Yorkshire; and they never make less
than eighty thousand, independent of immense incomes from their
other estates. Mrs. B. was dressed in a lavender-coloured satin, with
Mechlin lace, long sleeves, and a most beautiful Mechlin veil. The
necklace she wore was purchased by her eldest son, a boy of
eleven, who sent it from the jeweller’s without asking the price. It is
of most beautiful amethysts; the three middle stones are an inch and
a half long and an inch wide; the price was nine hundred guineas.
Mrs. B. wished to return it; but the Colonel not only confirmed the
purchase, but gave his son some thousands to complete the set of
amethysts by a bandeau and tiara, a cestus for the waist, armlets,
bracelets, brooches, sleeve-clasps, and shoe-knots. All these she
wore, and I must confess, for a small dinner-party appeared rather
too gaily decorated, particularly as Lady Lorraine’s dress was quite
in the contrary extreme. I never saw so strong a contrast ... Colonel
Beaumont is generally supposed to be extremely weak, but I sat next
him at dinner, and he conducted himself with infinite propriety and
great attention and politeness; yet when away from Mrs. Beaumont,
he is (they say) quite foolish, and owes everything to her influence.”
Added to this cryptic description—cryptic because, read it how we
will, we cannot be sure that there is not a subtle touch of sarcasm in
the words—is a shrewd observation on another visitor whom she
calls Mr. M.
“I told you I was not enamoured of Mr. M., and I will now describe
him to you.... He is an oddity from affectation; and, I often think, no
young man affects singularity when he can distinguish himself by
anything better. He affects to despise women, yet treats them with
great respect; and he makes the most extraordinary exertions to
provoke an argument, from which he generally escapes by some
whimsical phrase.”
The letter concludes with a long list of festivities which are to take
place in honour of her visit. Following on these, they journeyed to
Kirkley, Mr. Ogle’s seat, whither it was originally intended they should
travel direct but were deterred from so doing by the hospitality
offered en route. As a matter of fact their stay at Kirkley was a short
one, due to the same cause which had prevented their earlier arrival.
The only letter addressed from Kirkley is dated Wednesday
morning, October 8:—
“We arrived here on Monday at about three o’clock; received with
great glee by the Squire, and, after taking a short walk in the garden,
returned to dress. We had some time to wait for Lord and Lady
Charles, who did not arrive before half-past five or near six, and
even then undressed. They had been detained by the axle-tree
breaking down, and the detestable roads. Without their waiting to
dress, we immediately sat down to dinner and spent a most
delightful day. In the evening we found a manuscript play which had
been sent last year for Mr. Sheridan’s perusal.[14] It is taken from a
very striking story in the Canterbury Tales, of which I have forgotten
the title.... I read it aloud to the ladies, and the gentlemen played
billiards, and occasionally visited us. The play, which bears the name
of ‘Sigendorf,’ is really extremely interesting, and much better, as to
language, than most modern productions. Sheridan had never
looked at it, and Mr. Ogle lent it to Lady Charles.
“Yesterday morning, after a long walk, Lord and Lady C. left us.
We had an excellent dinner, and amused ourselves in the evening
with the ‘Liber Veritatis,’ which is, as you may remember, a very
expensive collection of two hundred of Claude Lorraine’s sketches,
published by Boydell.
“We are going in about an hour to Little Harle ... for Mr. Ogle and
papa remain here together. We go to-morrow to Alnwick and return
the same night. To-morrow is expected to be a very full day at the
Castle, on account of the Sessions Ball. The ladies—the married
ones I mean—go in Court dresses, without hoops, and display their
diamonds and finery on the occasion.
“Mr. Ogle is quite a man of gallantry and makes his house
extremely pleasant. We talk of coming to see him again next week,
when my cousin Mary and I are left to keep house alone at Morpeth,
and my uncle and aunt go to Little Harle Tower.”
From Morpeth, on October 11, was despatched a very long letter,
too long indeed for quotation in full, but from which we must give a
few extracts. It begins:—
“In papa’s letter of yesterday, my dearest darling mamma, he
promised that I would write you a long one to-day, and I certainly
owe you one in return for the very entertaining epistle I received
yesterday. After we left Kirkley, we called at Belsay, and saw Lady
Monck and the little Atticus, who was born at Athens fifteen months
since. He is a very fine boy, very like Sir Charles. Belsay is a very old
castle, and its eccentric possessor has done all he possibly could
desire to render it still more outré by stopping up the proper road,
and obliging us to approach this fine specimen of Gothic architecture
through the farm-yard. We arrived at Little Harle to dinner; and you
would have been greatly amused at my having my hair cut by Lord
Charles’s friseur, who is by occupation a joiner, and actually
attended with an apron covered with glue, and a rule in his hand
instead of scissors. He, however, performed his office so much to my
satisfaction, that I appointed him to dress my hair the next morning
for my visit to Alnwick. While I was thus employed, Lady Swinburne
called on purpose to see me. Lady Charles said I was out walking.
She is, you know, niece to the Duke of Northumberland, and I
regretted not seeing her.

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Recovering Assemblages: Unfolding

Sociomaterial Relations of Drug Use

ISBN 978-981-19-1234-4 ISBN 978-981-19-1235-1 (eBook)

What is recovery? Is recovery a process of individual transformation, an

whether recovery was successful, is still in progress, or became a closed

level. The central purpose of this chapter is to syndicate the overall

Chapter 5 explores social contexts of recovery experiences. Following

process in continuous circulation? How does developmental character

Frankfurt, Germany Aysel Sultan

This book is a revised version of a doctoral dissertation defended on June

Some parts of Chapter 1

Some parts of Chapter 6

Part I Connecting the Dots

Part II Diversifying Knowledge and Science of Recovery

Part III Recovery from and within Drug Use

Recovery is often understood and sometimes even interchangeably used

environment, policies, socioeconomic status, relationships, and personal

approaches, and finally (8) post-humanist approaches calling to decen-

the West. Current understandings of recovery, as contested as they may

The transition from a traditional, clinical detoxification model toward

assemblage approach to recovery undertaken in this book highlights

multimedia interviewing technology Drugs and Alcohol Today 16 (1), 4–15

involvement following inpatient treatment Alcoholism, Clinical and Exper-

longitudinal study Sociology 36 (4), 941–964. https://doi.org/10.1177/003

Stevens, A., & Zampini, G. F. (2018). Drug policy constellations: A Haber-

Zigon, J. (2011). “HIV is God’s Blessing”: Rehabilitating morality in neoliberal

Materialist thinking in recovery studies, within both mental health and

conjunctions between bodies—in which the distinction between animate

conceptualization and contextualization of recovery, as well as the polit-

whereas recovery movements emerged and spread, mostly across the

a progress in drug use—an escalation, loss of control, addiction—that

Services Administration (SAMHSA, 2012) in the USA offered ten prin-

• Recovery emerges from hope.

This characterization summarizes most of the contemporary ideas

(Duff, 2016: 61). This discussion on mental health recovery identifies

the “minority” and “majority” world division affecting the conceptu-

Latour and Actor-Network-Theory

Latour’s biggest contribution to social sciences stems from his interest

Mr. Whitbread, favoured man, was the immediate recipient of

The hope of Fame thy noble bosom fires,

THE TRIP TO NORTHUMBERLAND

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