Harm Reduction and the “Radical” Politics of the US South

Keywords: harm reduction, radical politics, critical geography
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

The National Harm Reduction Coalition defines harm reduction as “a set of practical strategies and ideas aimed at reducing negative consequences associated with drug use” (NHRC 2022). The praxis of harm reduction pre-dates its discourse, social movements, institutionalization, and scholarly literature. However, it wasn’t until the 1980s and the emergence of the HIV crisis in Western Europe and the United States that these practices became codified by a group of HIV activists and services providers within the framework of “harm reduction.” Since then, harm reduction policies have slowly migrated from the margins of public health policy to occupy a central role in governmental approaches to risky substance use and the opioid overdose crisis. Yet, the emergence of harm reduction frameworks and services continues to be unevenly developed across the globe. This paper centers the political geography of harm reduction in the US south to both disrupt the urban and global city focus of much of the discussion of the policy transfer and harm reduction literatures. Second, it explores the politics of harm reduction approaches across the politically conservative US south. I utilize a case study of the harm reduction in the US south to argue for a more geographical nuanced understanding of the post-political condition and radical politics that is attuned to a geographically contingent conception of radical politics that better represents the actually existing political condition that characterizes much of the urban and rural communities of the US south.