Biomedicalization

Biomedicalization

Technoscience, Health, and Illness in the U.S.

  • Author: Clarke, Adele E.; Mamo, Laura; Fosket, Jennifer Ruth; Fishman, Jennifer R.; Shim, Janet K.; Riska, Elianne
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • ISBN: 9780822345534
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822391258
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2010
  • Month: August
  • Pages: 512
  • DDC: 610.28/4
  • Language: English
The rise of Western scientific medicine fully established the medical sector of the U.S. political economy by the end of the Second World War, the first “social transformation of American medicine.” Then, in an ongoing process called medicalization, the jurisdiction of medicine began expanding, redefining certain areas once deemed moral, social, or legal problems (such as alcoholism, drug addiction, and obesity) as medical problems. The editors of this important collection argue that since the mid-1980s, dramatic, and especially technoscientific, changes in the constitution, organization, and practices of contemporary biomedicine have coalesced into biomedicalization, the second major transformation of American medicine. This volume offers in-depth analyses and case studies along with the groundbreaking essay in which the editors first elaborated their theory of biomedicalization.

Contributors. Natalie Boero, Adele E. Clarke, Jennifer R. Fishman, Jennifer Ruth Fosket, Kelly Joyce, Jonathan Kahn, Laura Mamo, Jackie Orr, Elianne Riska, Janet K. Shim, Sara Shostak

  • Contents
  • Preface
  • Acknowledgments
  • Biomedicalization / A Theoretical and Substantive Introduction
  • Part I / Theoretical and Historical Framings
    • 1 / Biomedicalization / Technoscientific Transformations of Health, Illness, and U.S. Biomedicine
    • 2 / Charting (Bio)Medicine and (Bio)Medicalization in the United States, 1890–Present
    • 3 / From the Rise of Medicine to Biomedicalization
    • 4 / Gender and Medicalization and Biomedicalization Theories
  • Part II / Case Studies: Focus on Difference
    • 5 / Fertility, Inc. / Consumption and Subjectification in U.S. Lesbian Reproductive Practices
    • 6 / The Body as Image / An Examination of the Economic and Political Dynamics of Magnetic Resonance Imaging and the Construction of Difference
    • 7 / The Stratified Biomedicalization of Heart Disease / Expert and Lay Perspectives on Racial and Class Inequality
    • 8 / Marking Populations and Persons at Risk / Molecular Epidemiology and Environmental Health
    • 9 / Surrogate Markers and Surrogate Marketing in Biomedicine / The Regulatory Etiology and Commercial Progression of “Ethnic” Drug Development
  • Part III / Focus on Enhancement
    • 10 / The Making of Viagra / The Biomedicalization of Sexual Dysfunction
    • 11 / Bypassing Blame / Bariatric Surgery and the Case of Biomedical Failure
    • 12 / Breast Cancer Risk as Disease / Biomedicalizing Risk
    • 13 / Biopsychiatry and the Informatics of Diagnosis / Governing Mentalities
    • Epilogue / Thoughts on Biomedicalization in Its Transnational Travels
  • References
  • About the Contributors
  • Index

Subjects

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