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Using an ethnographic approach, this article aims to understand the different ways in which disciplinary power, as described by Foucault, can be implemented when caring for alcoholic patients in emergency wards of general hospitals. It studies the disciplinary processes upon which care practices are based, before comparing these disciplinary mechanisms with the uses that patients make of them. The analysis shows that disciplinary power is not imposed extensively or unilaterally on people, but that it results from unstable power relationships between patients and health care professionals.