Social Science of the Syringe

Harm Reduction frames the syringe as a risk to one’s health. But is it?_x005F_x000D_ _x005F_x000D_ In this provocative book Vitellone brings a new approach to bear on the history of the troubling and transformative object that is the syringe. Through an in depth study of the policy and practice of needle exchange, Social Science of the Syringe situates the syringe at the centre of empirical inquiry and theoretical analysis as Vitellone questions accounts of the syringe as a device that facilitates social action between humans. Complicating the relationship between human and object – the injecting drug user and the syringe – Social Science of the Syringe considers what happens if one views the object as an intra-active part of the sociality that constitutes injecting practices.