Enabling places and the mediation of medication-taking experiences: A mixed qualitative methods study

Abstract

Studies have shown that medication-taking experiences are mediated by intricate social, affective and material entanglements. However, less attention has been accorded the role of place in the sociomaterial relations of these experiences. Using four examples drawn from a mixed qualitative methods study with people who use drugs living with chronic non-cancer pain in Nigeria, this study shows that medication-taking experiences are not stable but always relative to the spatio-temporal contexts of their enactment. Consistent with the logic of ‘enabling places’, the study produced findings showing that the actor-networks in different places afforded various resources that mediated medication-taking experiences. Medication-taking experiences were not reducible to simple encounters between bodies and pharmacology; instead, they were constituted through social, affective and material resources of network associations the availability of which made particular places enabling on particular occasions. To conclude, the study calls for the creation of enabling places by transforming actor-networks in ways that enable positive medication-taking experiences.