Medicalization, Health and

Development

Medicalization, Health and

Development

Josep M. Comelles, M.D.; Ph.D.Departament d’Antropologia, Filosofia i Treball Social

Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona2013, January

Josep M. Comelles, M.D.; Ph.D.Departament d’Antropologia, Filosofia i Treball Social

Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona2013, January

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Medicalization as development

✦ A classical idea

✦ The hegemony of a medical naturalistic regard

✦ The subalternity of religious discourses on health

✦ Medicalization as progress

The problems

✦ Medicalization is a complex process

✦ Medicalization has non linear steps

✦ Medicalization has changing meanings

Medicalization 1 A local arena

✦ A local strategy to manage the res publica in cities

✦ To prevent the plague

✦ To naturalize private health practices

✦ To legitimate some professionals: doctors and pharmacists

✦ A naturalistic conception of the ethiology of diseases

Medicalization 1 Effects

✦ A new social image and political position for doctors and pharmacists

✦ The enbodiment of galenism in popular culture

✦ The articulation between galenism and popular empiricism

✦ A new way of popularization of systematic medicine: the printed book

Medicalization 2A Nation State arena

✦ The development of public health policies

✦ Doctors and pharmacists as organic intellectuals

✦ A natural conception of disease

✦ Science and technology as tools of progress

Medicalization 2Effects

✦ Medicalization as a strategic tool of global economic imperialism

✦ The trend towards an hegemonic individual concept of disease and cure

✦ The hegemony of the body and the concept of health bodies

✦ The subalternity of public health policies (higienism and sanitation

Nip/Tuck 1x01 (2004)

Medicalization 2Side effects

✦ The attainment of the aims of public health policies hide its importance

✦ The medicalization as an instrument of colonial imperialism

✦ The hegemony of a biological, clinical and individual conception of disease

✦ The rythm of medicalization is not equal everywhere even in developed countries: inequalities and inequities

Medicalization 3An individual arena

✦ In developed countries the first two steps of medicalization are apparently be closed

✦ Public Health is not the main concern of public policies

✦ Doctors and health professionals are no more the organic intellectuals of the process

✦ The third step coexists with the second in the global context

Medicalization and communication tools

Period Topics Emphasis Media Tools

13thC -18/19th C The plague The city as res publicaRegiment de la pesteMedical topographies

18th C.-1970

Hygiene and

sanitation, Diseases

The nation State as the space of

public health policies

Books, novels, reports, newspapers

advertisements,movies in theatres, the proto history of

TV

1970-2012

The hegemony

of the body care

Medicalization is a structural dimension

of global culture

TelevisionInternet

(reality shows. advertisements, shows,

documentaries, soap operas)

We, the others and the political economy of research and of

culture

We: Biomedical and socioculture biomedical

research

Scholar production of knowledge

“mainly disease oriented”

public or private management

The cultural dimension of medicalizatio

n

F2FInterne

tMedias

Mainly “health”oriented

and private management

Are we really speaking on

development now?