Medicalization, Health and Development Josep M. Comelles, M.D.; Ph.D. Departament d’Antropologia, Filosofia i Treball Social Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona 2013, January Josep M. Comelles, M.D.; Ph.D. Departament d’Antropologia, Filosofia i Treball Social Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona 2013, January

Buñuel, Luis (1932)Tierra sin pan

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 2 A 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 2 Effects ✦ 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 2 Side 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 3 An 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 EmphasisMedia Tools 13thC -18/19th C The plagueThe city as res publica Regiment de la peste Medical topograp hies 18th C 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 The hegemony of the body care Medicalization is a structural dimension of global culture Television Internet (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 medicalization F2F Internet Medias Mainly “health” oriented and private management

Are we really speaking on development now?