91 FOUR Medicalisation Medicalisation is a key technology of power through which drug users are governed. It is the process by which non-medical problems come to be defined and treated as if they are medical issues. Another key strand of drug policy discourse in the UK, US and Canada operating alongside prohibition and punishment is that of public health. The technology of medicalisation underpins public health discourse, and compliments prohibition and punishment regimes. Medicalisation operates as a form of social control and regulation whereby social
91 FOUR Medicalisation Medicalisation is a key technology of power through which drug users are governed. It is the process by which non-medical problems come to be defined and treated as if they are medical issues. Another key strand of drug policy discourse in the UK, US and Canada operating alongside prohibition and punishment is that of public health. The technology of medicalisation underpins public health discourse, and compliments prohibition and punishment regimes. Medicalisation operates as a form of social control and regulation whereby social
studied how competition ( Bourdieu, 1975 ) and boundary work ( Gieryn, 1983 ) shape the construction of knowledge in a scientific field. In this article, we are not interested in the constructed truths about poverty but rather in who is engaged in constructing these truths over time. Therefore, we investigated whether there has been a change in the prominence of different disciplines in the scientific discourse on poverty since the start of the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) in 1956. Based on medicalisation and psychologisation theory ( Conrad, 1992 ; Conrad
training (AMA, 1992; Schoonmaker and Shull, 1994) 17 which is intended to ensure the adequate provision of services for women experiencing domestic violence. As with policy development, screening for domestic violence has inherent within it a range of contradictions which fit uneasily within medical discourse. These contradictions relate to the concept of ‘health absolutism’ (found within holistic/person-led models of healthcare) (Gallagher and Ferrante, 1987) and its impact on the medicalisation of social problems and the professionalisation of medicine itself (Davis
This timely comparative study assesses the role of medical doctors in reforming publicly funded health services in England and Canada.
Respected authors from health and legal backgrounds on both sides of the Atlantic consider how the high status of the profession uniquely influences reforms. With summaries of developments in models of care, and the participation of doctors since the inception of publicly funded healthcare systems, they ask whether professionals might be considered allies or enemies of policy-makers.
With insights for future health policy and research, the book is an important contribution to debates about the complex relationship between doctors and the systems in which they practice.
, the NHS took the emphasis of the lead agency role for social services as another opportunity to withdraw from continuing healthcare provision (Glendinning et al, 2005, p 247). Green Paper on Social Care An initial reading of Independence, well-being and choice (DH, 2005a) is likely to have the opposite effect to generating concerns around a re-medicalisation of later life. Rather, the Green Paper is concerned to set out a framework of desired outcomes that is the very opposite to defining older people solely in terms of their medical needs. More specifically, seven
Introduction Accounts of legal embodiment are impoverished if they do not explore the ways in which other institutions contribute to our understanding of bodies. In the case of intersex embodiment, medicine is crucial for understanding how intersex people have been framed – indeed, and as we shall outline, medical accounts offer the paradigmatic account of intersex embodiment. Medicine investigates and explores the materiality of the body and presents its results as objective and value free. However, medicine’s reporting back of this materiality is not
Medical sociology has long been concerned with the role played by specialist forms of expertise in enabling the governance of ‘troublesome’ social groups – including those who are unwell, ‘deviant’ and criminally insane. However, only recently has it begun to explore how the state ensures the public is protected from acts of medical malpractice, negligence and criminality. Against the background of a series of high-profile scandals, including the case of Dr Harold Shipman who murdered over 200 of his patients, this topical and authoritative book examines how the regulation of doctors has been modernised by reforms to the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service and the introduction of the quality assurance process of medical revalidation. In doing so, it questions whether there is evidence to support the argument that revalidation serves the public interest by ensuring that individual doctors are fit to practise.
Highlighting areas of good practice and areas for further research and development, the book is ideal for academics and postgraduates interested in medical sociology, socio-legal studies, medical law, medical education, health policy and related subjects
turns me off. It’s this concern with medicine that seems to override everything else - the natural process. (Alison Mountjoy) Defending childbirth as a natural process is not easy. Being critical of its medicalisation, of the control doctors believe they should properly exercise over it, places the patient in an attitude of confrontation: battles produce stress and anxiety. It is easier for the patient to act passively. As Alison Mountjoy puts it: Who do you believe? That’s part of the trouble of having a baby, that somehow each book and each medical person, they
difficulties. LGBT and non-binary frameworks are ill-equipped to challenge the paradigmatic construction of intersex embodiment as a disorder and cannot redress the systemic disadvantages that arise from the medical management of intersex bodies. Nor can anti-discrimination laws remedy the scope of rights violations identified by international bodies like the UNCRC and the Council of Europe that these non-consensual medical interventions may result in ( Garland and Slokenberga, 2018 : 1; Office for the Commissioner of Human Rights, 2019 ; UNCRC, 2019 ). At best, then
