Home Page: Understanding Philadelphia's Opioid Crisis: A Structural Approach

This blog project explores the opioid crisis in Kensington, Philadelphia, focusing on theories of structural violence, biopower, and social suffering. The goal is to reframe the problem of opioid addiction, transforming what is commonly seen as an individual or medical failure into understanding that the root of the issue is a consequence of redlining, racialized policing, and political neglect, all of which have shaped the neighborhood for the past several decades. This series of blog posts employs the methods of medical anthropology, social epidemiology, and medical sociology to unpack the different aspects of the crisis and to show how inequality creates vulnerability, forcing many individuals to search for their own means of survival and making them more susceptible to harm.

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