Multivalent Medicalization: New Directions in the Dynamics of Medicalization

• In Event: Medical Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 1. (De)Medicalization Processes

Abstract

Fifty years ago, Peter Conrad published his first book, Identifying Hyperactive Children: the Medicalization of Deviant Behavior, in what came to constitute a significant body of work developing medicalization theory. Building on the work of Irving Zola and others, Conrad articulated what he referred to as the shift from "badness to sickness," where moralized failings were reframed as medical deficits. Through substantial engagement by sociologists of health, illness, and medicine, medicalization has come to occupy a preeminent place in theories of healthcare. Many scholars have made key interventions and contributions to medicalization theory, noting that, for example, demedicalization can happen, as well as partial medicalization. In the early 2000s, Adele Clarke and colleagues brought a more expansive view of the relationship between greater social forces and medicalization, coining "biomedicalization" as an organizing concept. In the past two decades, further contributions have distinguished between medicalization as a process in the larger context of biomedicalization and have further conceptualized distinctions between medicalization and pathologization, as well as simultaneous medicalization and demedicalization.

However, work on the dynamics of medicalization is still incomplete. Notably, prominent scholars have not fully attended to the tension between medicalization and demedicalization that may be leveraged by the same actor simultaneously. In this paper, I trace the development of medicalization theory and outline the elements of a complicating framework: multivalent medicalization. Analyzing advertisements from direct-to-consumer (DTC) telehealth companies, I show how actors can make moves that are simultaneously medicalizing and demedicalizing. In so doing, I complicate the relationship between medicalization as an outcome and the processes that produce it.

Author

• Ben Wills, University of California, San Diego