Handcuffs’: Fluid Negotiations of Subjectivity, Space and the Substance of Methadone Treatment

The contested space of addiction treatment is a space of intersections and inscriptions, a space where the biopolitics of treatment practice meets strategies of sociospatial stigmatization project-ed by the surrounding community. Drawing from a case study of community conflict surrounding the relocation of a methadone clinic into Corktown, a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood on the peripheries of downtown Toronto, this articles explores the sociospatial dimensions of addiction treatment through a theoretical and ethnographic investigation of client impressions regarding the space of the methadone clinic, before and after its relocation into Corktown. Examin-ing clients ’ engagement with the space of the clinic as a series of body–space “assemblages ” and “folds, ” this analysis reveals the clinic as an inherently social space, where clients negotiate both the fluid strategies of biopolitical control implicated in treatment practice, and strategies of socio-spatial stigmatization in order to assert and articulate their “right to the city.” Keyword