Harm Reduction is a Social Movement

Abstract

Harm reduction is a label given to a suite of health and social service practices that seek to mitigate the harm associated with illicit drug use without demanding or expecting drug users to abstain. It is also a label under which a diverse and globalized social movement has organized to alter the conditions that give rise to drug-related harm, broadly construed. The central argument of this thesis is that a philosophy of harm reduction will benefit from taking a social movement perspective. Philosophical engagement in the area that focuses on or isolates narrow issues of policy while neglecting the social movement, risks reproducing or strengthening a tendency toward technocratic management that many harm reduction activists struggle to resist. By adopting a social movement perspective, the philosophizing that is done can be better attuned to the actual politics, and actual needs that are identified in practice.