From Medicalisation to Pharmaceuticalisation - A Sociological Overview. New Scenarios for the Sociology of Health

• Authors: Mara Tognetti Bordogna
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The aim of this paper is to analyse the sociological literature on pharmaceuticalisation and see how sociology helps us understand and explain the phenomenon. We then discuss how sociology, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, defines the process of pharmaceuticalisation and how this last is evolving. The paper points out that, while medicalisation remains a key concept for health sociology, it is increasingly being queried and/or extended to allow for a techno-scientific era of biomedicalisation (Clarke et al. 2003) and to acknowledge the importance of the pharmaceutical industry in this process (Williams, Martin and Gabe 2011a, 2011b). Particular attention will be paid to the process of pharmaceuticalisation as brought about not just by doctors and their prescriptions, but by the central role of pharmaceutical promoters and the marketing of drugs.

Keywords

EN

Medicalisation; Pharmaceuticalisation; Drugs; Health; Sociology of health; Disease

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Social Change Review
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 119-140

Dates

published

2014-12-01

online

2015-03-04

Contributors

author

Mara Tognetti Bordogna

• University Milano-Bicocca, Department of Sociology and Social Research, 8 Via Bicocca degli Arcimboldi, Edificio U7, 20126 Milano, Italy

References

• Abraham, John. 1995. Science, Politics and the Pharmaceutical Industry. London: Routledge.
• Abraham, John. 2008. “Sociology of pharmaceuticals development and regulation: a realist empirical research programme.” Sociology of Health & Illness 30(6): 869-885.[PubMed][Crossref][WoS]
• Abraham, John. 2009. “The pharmaceutical industry, the state and the NHS.” In The New Sociology of the Health Service, edited by Jonathan Gabe and Michael Calnan, 99-120. London: Routledge.
• Abraham, John. 2010a. “The Sociological Concomitants of the Pharmaceutical Industry and Medications.” In Handbook of Medical Sociology, edited by Chloe Bird, Peter Conrad, Allen Fremont and Stefan Timmermans, 290-308. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
• Abraham, John. 2010b. “Pharmaceuticalization of Society in Context: theoretical, empirical, and health dimensions.” Sociology 44(4): 603-622.[Crossref][WoS]
• Ballard, Karen and Mary Ann Elston. 2005. “Medicalisation: A Multidimensional Concept.” Social Theory and Health 3(3): 228-241.
• Bell, Susan and Anne E. Figert. 2012. “Medicalization and Pharmaceuticalization at the Intersections: Looking Backward, Sideways and Forward.” Social Science & Medicine 75(5): 775-783.[Crossref][WoS]
• Biehl, João. 2008. “Drugs for all: the Future of Global AIDS Treatment.” Medical Anthropology 27(2): 99-105.[Crossref][WoS][PubMed]
• Busfield, Joan. 2006. “Pills, Power, People: Sociological Understandings of the Pharmaceutical Industry.” Sociology 40(2): 297-314.[Crossref]
• Busfield, Joan. 2010. “‘A Pill for Every Ill’: Explaining the Expansion in Medicine Use.” Social Science & Medicine 70(6): 934-941.[Crossref][WoS]
• Clark, David. 2002. “Between hope and acceptance: the medicalisation of dying.” British Medical Journal 324: 905-907.
• Clarke, Adele, Janet K. Shim, Laura Mamo, Jennifer Ruth Fosket, and Jennifer R. Fishman. 2003. “Biomedicalization: Technoscientific Transformations of Health, Illness, and U.S. Biomedicine.” American Sociological Review 68(2): 161-194.[Crossref]
• Clarke, Adele, Laura Mamo, Jennifer Ruth Fosket, Jennifer R. Fishman, and Janet K. Shim. 2009. Biomedicalization: Technoscience and Transformations of Health and Illness in the U.S. Durham: Duke University Press.
• Clarke, Adele and Janet Shim. 2009. “Medicalizzazione e biomedicalizzazione rivisitate: tecno-scienze e trasformazioni di salute, malattia e biomedicine.” Salute e Società 2 (Fascicolo EN2): 223-257.
• Conrad, Peter. 1992. “Medicalisation and Social Control.” Annual Review of Sociology 18: 209-232
• Conrad, Peter. 2007. The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Conrad, Peter and Joseph W. Schneider. 1980. “Looking at Levels of Medicalization: A Comment on Strong's Critique of the Thesis of Medical Imperialism.” Social Science & Medicine. Part A: Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology 14(1): 75-79.[Crossref]
• Conrad, Peter and Joseph W. Schneider. 1992. Deviance and Medicalization: from Badness to Sickness. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
• Coveney, Catherine, Jonathan Gabe, and Simon Williams. 2012. “Potenziamento della capacità mentale? Dalla medicalizzazione della cognizione alla farmacologizzazione delle routine mental life”. Salute e Società 2 (Fascicolo suppl. 2): 145-159.
• Daemmrich, Arthur. 2004. Pharmaco Politics. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.
• Elliot Carl. 2003. Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream. New York: W. W. Norton.
• Elston, Mary Ann, Jonathan Gabe, David Denney, Raymond Lee, and Maria O'Beirne. 2002. “Violence against Doctors: a Medical(ised) Problem? The Case of National Health Service General Practitioners.” Sociology of Health & Illness 24(5): 575-598.[Crossref]
• Fox, Nick and Katie Ward. 2009. “Pharma in the Bedroom and the Kitchen. The Pharmaceuticalisation of Daily Life.” Sociology of Health & Illness 30(6): 856- 868.[WoS]
• Garattini, Silvio and Vittorio Bertele. 2001. “Adjusting Europe’s Drug Regulation to Public Health Needs.” The Lancet 358(9275): 64-67.
• Illich, Ivan. 1976. Medical Nemesis. New York: Pantheon; Ital. trans. 2005. Nemesi medica. L’espropriazione della salute. Milano: Boroli Editore.
• Jones, Kathryn. 2009. “In Whose Interest? Relationships between Health Consumer Groups and the Pharmaceutical Industry in the UK.” In Pharmaceutical and Society: Critical Discourses and Debates, edited by Simon J. Williams, Jonathan Gabe and Peter Davis, 112-125. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Martin, Paul. 2006. “The Pharmaceutical Person.” BioSocieties 1:.273-287.
• Metzl, Jonathan and Rebecca Herzig. 2007. “Medicalisation in the 21st Century: Introduction.” The Lancet 369(9562): 697-698.[WoS]
• Moynihan, Ray and Richard Smith. 2002. “Too Much Medicine? Almost Certainly.” British Medical Journal 324(7342): 859-860.
• Nichter, Mark. 1989. “Pharmaceuticals, the Commodification of Health, and the Health Care-medicine Use Transition.” In Anthropology and International Health: Asian Case Studies, edited by Mark Nichter and Mini Nichter, 265-326. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers.
• Novas, Carlos. 2006. “The Political Economy of Hope: Patients’ Organizations, Science and Biovalue.” BioSocieties 1: 289-305.
• Petryna, Adriana. 2006. “Globalizing Human Subjects Research.” In Global Pharmaceuticals: Ethics, Markets, Practices, edited by Adriana Petryna, Andrew Lakoff, and Arthur Kleinman, 33-60. Durham: Duke University Press.
• Rodeschini, Giulia. 2012. “Curare gli anziani: pratiche di cura in tensione tra processi assistenziali e di medicalizzazione”. PhD Diss., Università degli Studi di Trento, Scuola di Dottorato in Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale.
• Rose, Nicholas. 2007. The Politics of Life Itself. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Rossi, Paolo and Mara Tognetti Bordogna. 2013. “Mutual help without borders? Plurality and heterogeneity of online mutual help practices for people with long-term chronic conditions.” The European Journal of Social Work 17(4): 523-538.[WoS]
• Sironi, Vittorio and Mara Tognetti Bordogna. 2009. “La politique du médicament en Italie: histoire et perspectives.” Revue Sociologie Santé 30: 65-80.
• Terraneo, Marco, Simone Sarti, and Mara Tognetti Bordogna. 2014. “Social Inequalities and Pharmaceutical Cost Sharing in Italian Regions.” International Journal of Health Services 44(4): 761-785.[WoS][Crossref]
• Whitmarsh, Ian. 2008. “Biomedical ambivalence: Asthma Diagnosis, the Pharmaceutical and Other Contradictions in Barbados.” American Ethnologist 35(1): 40-63.[WoS]
• Williams, Simon, Jonathan Gabe, and Peter Davis. 2008. “The sociology of pharmaceuticals: progress and prospects.” Sociology of Health & Illness 30(6): 813-824. [WoS][Crossref]
• Williams, Simon J., Clive Seale, Sharon Boden, Pam Lowe, and Deborah Lynn Steinberg. 2008. “Waking up to sleepiness: Modafinil, the media and the pharmaceuticalisation of everyday/night life.” Sociology of Health & Illness 30(6): 839-855.[Crossref][WoS]
• Williams, Simon J. and Paul Martin. 2009. “Correspondence on cognitive enhancement drugs for the healthy: risks and benefits may turn out to be finely balanced.” Nature 457: 532.
• Williams, Simon J., Paul Martin, and Jonathan Gabe. 2011a. “The pharmaceuticalisation of society? A framework for analysis.” Sociology of Health & Illness 33(5): 710-725.[Crossref][WoS][PubMed]
• Williams, Simon J., Paul Martin, and Jonathan Gabe. 2011b. “Evolving sociological analyses of pharmaceuticalisation: a reply to Abraham Sociology of Health & Illness 5: 729-730.[Crossref][WoS]
• Williams, Simon J., Jonathan Gabe, and Paul Martin. 2012. “Medicalization and pharmaceuticalization at the intersections: A commentary on Bell and Figert.” Social Science & Medicine 75(12): 2129-2130.[WoS]
• Zola, Kenneth. 1972. “Medicine as an Institution of Social Control.” Sociological Review 20(4): 487-504. [Crossref]

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/scr-2015-0002