Reluctant Saviors: Professional ambivalence, cultural imaginaries, and deservingness construction in naloxone provision

Madison Baumgart-McFarland, Elizabeth Chiarello and Tayla Slay

Social Science & Medicine, 2022, vol. 309, issue C

Abstract: Professions compete over jurisdictions by laying claim to specific tasks. Research shows that they enhance their professional status by siphoning off tasks and seizing control of social problems that belong to other professions. Not all tasks are equally desirable, though. Studies find that workers resist helping stigmatized groups or taking on “unsolvable” social problems. This raises a critical question for social scientists: How do professionals respond when opportunities for jurisdictional expansion are contingent on aiding a stigmatized population? Our study draws on research from the sociology of culture, professions, and stigma and empirical evidence about naloxone provision to develop a theory of professional ambivalence that explains how professionals respond to this fundamental tension.

Keywords: Opioid crisis; Naloxone; First responders; Professionals; Deservingness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115230

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