Resisting Violence: The Construction of Tactics Among Thai Women Who Inject Drugs

• Published date: 01 April 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/1557085116685397
• Date: 01 April 2019
• Author: Niphattra Haritavorn
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1557085116685397

Feminist Criminology

2019, Vol. 14(2) 198 –213

© The Author(s) 2017

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DOI: 10.1177/1557085116685397

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Article

Resisting Violence: The

Construction of Tactics

Among Thai Women Who

Inject Drugs

Niphattra Haritavorn1

Abstract

This study examines the range of tactics used by Thai women who inject drugs in their

attempts to lessen the impact of gendered structural violence. Participant observation

and in-depth interviews with 35 Thai women who inject drugs were conducted. The

women’s tactics to cope with structural violence included leaving home, adopting

masculine traits, engaging in various forms of work, and having a drug partner. These

tactics are a means of balancing gender and drug use, which are complicated by living

under the threat of violence, aspects of embodied experiences that are trapped in

powerful conventional roles of masculinity and femininity.

Keywords

structural violence, Thailand, tactic, qualitative research, women who inject drugs

Introduction

Across the world, women who use drugs are ensnared in a web of problems arising

from structural violence, in which drug addiction magnifies their vulnerabilities and

marginalization (Erickson, Butters, McGillicuddy, & Hallgren, 2000; Magura, Kang,

Shapiro, & O’Day, 1993; Miller & Neaigus, 2002). As many activities surrounding

drug-taking operate in an overtly masculine culture, social reproduction functions in

such a way that women are more victimized and vulnerable than men (Bourgois, 2004;

Pinkham & Malinowska-Sempruch, 2008). Women who use drugs often experience

1Thammasat University, Klong Luang, Thailand

Corresponding Author:

Niphattra Haritavorn, Faculty of Public Health, Thammasat University, Klong Luang, Pathum Thani 12121,

Thailand.

Email: niphattraph@gmail.com

685397FCXXXX10.1177/1557085116685397Feminist CriminologyHaritavorn

research-article2017

Haritavorn 199

violence in ways associated with gender relations, thus further entrenching social

inequalities (Epele, 2002).

Living with drugs, women risk their lives by exposing themselves to multiple kinds

of dangers and threats (Sales & Murphy, 2000). Moreover, physical violence is a key

indicator of male power in the drug culture. Bourgois’s (2004) ethnography empha-

sizes that among crack dealers in East Harlem, New York, gendered brutality—espe-

cially rape—engulfs their street drug culture and adolescent socialization. The violence

that women who inject drugs are most likely to experience—domestic violence and

sexual harassment, for example—is also the most underreported. And, in a seemingly

vicious circle, the more violence the women experience, the more drugs they use

(Epele, 2002).

Women using illicit drugs are described as particularly transgressive by a number

of researchers who have emphasized the illegal, untraditional behavior of women who

use drugs (Banwell & Bammer, 2006; Maher & Richard, 1998; Young, 1994).

Importantly, it can be assumed that societies use multiple strategies to deal with women

who use drugs, which together contribute to a sense of difference by identifying and

treating women using drugs as socially polluting (Paone & Alperen, 1998). Literature

describes the living environment, stigmatization, and governmental policies as impor-

tant factors in establishing the conditions that work to cause women suffering (Kandall,

1996). Unequal gender relations, especially harassment, underpin the daily violence

that women face in the drug community (Shannon et al., 2008).

This is particularly noticeable in Thailand when women who inject drugs fail to

fulfill their traditional feminine roles of mother, wife, and daughter. A daughter should

be grateful; she should behave properly; a wife must obey and respect her husband; a

mother is responsible for taking care of the household and children (Bumroongsook,

1995; Pongsapich, 1997). Thai society expects children to be grateful and obedient to

their parents and behave as their parents wish (Muecke, 1992; Whittaker, 1999).

Hence, women who use drugs do not fit the traditional image of Thai women.

To date, the tactics that Thai women who use drugs in Thai society use to cope with

structural violence are largely unexplored in both popular and academic literature. In

this article, I elucidate the tactics that Thai women who inject drugs use to restructure

social relationships with other people, and the role of social and structural violence

and gender relations in shaping the lives of women who inject drugs in Thailand. As

Ariss (1997) noted, tactics are the means by which marginalized groups struggle

against or resist the power of dominance (external forces). In this article, I argue that

structural violence affects the lives of Thai women who use drugs and becomes the

reason that women construct their own tactics. The women’s tactics formation thereby

becomes an attempt to neutralize the effects of structural violence and promote the

normalization of their lives.

Structural Violence, Drugs, and Gender

Structural violence refers to forms of orchestrated social oppression that place a group

of people or individuals in harm’s way (Farmer, 1999). Farmer (2010) noted, “structural