Violencias y traumas. Políticos del sufrimiento social entre usuarios de drogas

Abstract

Trauma, traumatic experiences and their consequences on the social and individual bodies have become central notions within the current anthropological discussion on violence and social suffering. Taking as a point of departure the multiple forms of violence, I mean, not only those related to sexual and physical assaults but also those invisible and silent forms -like political, symbolic and structural violences-, the concept of trauma becomes a notion that throws light on specific kinds of social suffering. However, the psycosocial perspective that has dominated the research on trauma, does have restrictions tied up with privatization, medicalization and normatizations processes implied in the posttraumatic stress disorder definition (PTSD). The objective of this article consists in discuss the notions of trauma and traumatic experiences, their relations to diverse kinds of violences and their potential for the study of social suffering among injector drug users. Finally, this perspective is applied to the data collected during the ethnography study carried out in "the Mission" neighborhood, San Francisco, U.S (from 1999 to 2000).