Women's Studies 2244 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Medicalization, Social Enterprise, Medical Diagnosis

• School: Western University
• Department: Women's Studies
• Course: Women's Studies 2244
• Professor: Jessica Polzer

Document Summary

Medicalization describes a process by which nonmedical problems become defined and treated as medical problems, usually in terms of illnesses or disorders. A process whereby more and more of everyday life has come under medical dominion, influence and supervision. Medicine is becoming a major institution of social control, nudging aside, if not incorporating, the more traditional institutions of religion and law. It is becoming the new repository of truth, the place where absolute and often final judgments are made by supposedly morally neutral and objective experts. And these judgments are made, not in the name of virtue or legitimacy, but in the name of health. The priest declares implicit in sickness as it is in crime or in sin. what is holy and who has broken a taboo. The physician decides what is a symptom and who is sick. He is a moral entrepreneur, charged with inquisitorial powers to discover certain wrongs to be righted