A Gap in Science's and the Media Images of People who use Drugs and Sex Workers: Research on Organizations of the Oppressed

Abstract

This paper discusses organizations of the oppressed, such as drug user and sex worker groups, and the images of themselves that they construct. We suggest that analysis of these organizationally-produced collective self-images –frequently overlooked in scholarly research –is crucial to understanding the complex internal dynamics of users' and sex workers' organizations and struggles they engage in when defining their collective (organizational) identities and course of action.

Keywords :

• drug users’ organizations
• users’ groups
• sex work
• sex worker organizations
• images
• organizational doctrine
• social movements

THE AUTHORS

Agata Dziuban, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Sociology at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Her academic work focuses on the intersections between sex work, health and human rights, and collective mobilization among sex workers in response to the HIV epidemic in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. She is an outreach worker delivering HIV-related services to female sex workers in Poland, cofounder of the Sex Work Polska, Coalition for the Rights of Sex Workers in Poland, and—since August 2014—Policy Officer at the for the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe.

Samuel R. Friedman, Ph.D., is Director of Infectious Disease Research at National Development and Research Institutes, Inc. and the Director of the Interdisciplinary Theoretical Synthesis Core in the Center for Drug Use and HIV Research, New York City. Dr. Friedman is an author of about 450 publications on HIV/hepatitis C/STIs, and drug use epidemiology and prevention. Honors include a NIDA Avant Garde Award (2012), the International Rolleston Award of the International Harm Reduction Association (2009), the first Sociology AIDS Network Award for Career Contributions to the Sociology of HIV/AIDS (2007), and a Lifetime Contribution Award, Association of Black Sociologists (2005).

GLOSSARY

• Organization: A group of people who come together to act together around an area of interest.

• Organizational doctrine: The concepts in terms of which organizations define their purposes and ideologies.

• People who use drugs: people who use illegal or illicit substances such as heroin or cocaine.

• Sex work: the sale/exchange of consensual adult sexual services.

• Sex workers: female, male and trans-gender adults aged over 18 who receive money or goods in exchange for sexual services.