A question of will: addiction treatment in Ecuador

Ana Isabel Jácome-Rosenfeld’s A Question of Will is a gift of moral acumen, providing the world with ethnographic insight and conceptual clarity. Pundits across the political spectrum can debate the pros and cons of drug prohibition and its fifty years of policies, but it took a scholar trained in the art of ethnography and the science of psychology to engage, face-to-face, those people affected most by the criminalization and medicalization of addiction. The short story is that the 2008 Constitution of Ecuador defines addiction as a health problem, and this marked a shift from a prohibitionist approach to drugs to the rise of public addiction treatment centers. These centers have not only become privileged spaces to understanding the transition from criminalization to medicalization, but also the many contradictions that the medicalization process advances. One of the most beautiful elements of this book is that Jácome also engages the employees of these centers and the families of these patients. They, too, have become embroiled in addiction. Beautiful, timely, and yet also timeless, this book invites the reader through its stunning prose to enter the public addiction treatment centers of Ecuador—to understand that addiction must not be reduced to a question of will. Kevin Lewis O’Neill Professor, Department for the Study of Religion Director, Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies University of Toronto