"The Pastoral Clinic" takes us on a penetrating journey into an iconic Western landscape - northern New Mexico's Espanola Valley, home to the highest rate of heroin addiction and fatal overdoses in the United States. In a luminous narrative, Angela Garcia chronicles the lives of several Hispano addicts, introducing us to the intimate, physical, and institutional dependencies in which they are entangled. We discover how history pervades this region that has endured centuries of material and cultural dispossession, and we come to see its heroin problem as a contemporary expression of these conditions, as well as a manifestation of the human desire to be released from them. Lyrically evoking the Espanola Valley and its residents through conversations, encounters, and recollections, "The Pastoral Clinic" is at once a devastating portrait of addiction, a rich ethnography of place, and an eloquent call for a new ethics of care.

About the Author
Angela Garcia is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University.

Reviews
"A new and refreshing study... This is a powerful testament, and Garcia presents a vision of where we need to go when it comes to preventing the slow suicide of addictions." The Progressive "Stunningly written and deeply intelligent. This is anthropology at its best." American Anthropologist



Book Information
ISBN 9780520262089
Author Angela Garcia
Format Paperback
Page Count 264
Imprint University of California Press
Publisher University of California Press
Weight(grams) 363g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 15mm