Elizabeth Chiarello Assistant Professor of Sociology, Saint Louis University Sociologists and socio-legal scholars have explored how social fields transform social problems, but have largely overlooked how social problems transform social fields. This research uses the contemporary U.S. opioid crisis as a case for examining how efforts to address a shared social problem have transformed the fields of healthcare and criminal justice. Based on interviews with healthcare providers and enforcement agents in California, findings demonstrate how the use of shared technology in the form of prescription drug monitoring programs paired with the encroachment of institutional logics from adjacent fields helps to reshape workers' roles, routines, and relationships in ways that create opportunities for field-level change.
Institute for Research on Women & GenderShared Technology, Competing Logics
How Healthcare Providers And Law Enforcement Agents Use Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs To Combat Opioid Abuse
March 27, 2018
3:00 - 4:30 p.m.
2239 Lane Hall
Sponsored by: Institute for Research on Women & Gender
Contact Information: irwg@umich.edu
Elizabeth Chiarello Assistant Professor of Sociology, Saint Louis University Sociologists and socio-legal scholars have explored how social fields transform social problems, but have largely overlooked how social problems transform social fields. This research uses the contemporary U.S. opioid crisis as a case for examining how efforts to address a shared social problem have transformed the fields of healthcare and criminal justice. Based on interviews with healthcare providers and enforcement agents in California, findings demonstrate how the use of shared technology in the form of prescription drug monitoring programs paired with the encroachment of institutional logics from adjacent fields helps to reshape workers' roles, routines, and relationships in ways that create opportunities for field-level change.