Helena Hansen, an MD, Ph.D. psychiatrist-anthropologist, is Professor and Chair of Research Theme in Translational Social Science and Health Equity, as well as Associate Director of the Center for Social Medicine at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. She has published widely in clinical and social science journals ranging from JAMA and NEJM to Social Science and Medicine and Medical Anthropology, on faith healing of addiction in Puerto Rico, psychiatric disability under welfare reform, opioids and race, ethnic marketing of pharmaceuticals, and structural competency.

Abstract

This talk draws from Hansen’s forthcoming book Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Heroin in America.  Whiteout deploys ethnographic and historical analysis of pharmaceutical manufacturers, regulators, neuroscientists and addiction physicians to track technologies of whiteness in neuroscience, pharmaceutical development, regulation and marketing, that stem from drug policies that date back over a century. Based on a decade of participant observation, interviews and archival research, Whiteout updates theories of racial capitalism to reveal how biotechnological industries are driven by white consumption rather than black labor.