Overview

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

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9780822345701

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Reviews

In this excellent book, Adele E. Clarke and her colleagues have meticulously mapped out the multiple dimensions of the phenomenon that they term 'biomedicalization', tracing the links between such apparently distinct phenomena as the increasing use of pharmaceutical drugs for prevention and enhancement, the new biomedical focus on risk and risk prevention, the commodification of medicine, the growing global bioeconomy, and the increased salience of the active and responsible patient. In demonstrating the socio-political, technical and epistemic interconnections between these developments, and through case studies of issues from reproduction to psychiatry, and from body imaging to biomarkers, this book makes a fundamental contribution to our understanding of the contemporary technoscientific transformation of American medicine, and one that will inform and inspire future research. Nikolas Rose, Martin White Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science At a time when biocapital, biopower, biotechnology, and biomedicine are more entangled than ever, this volume offers both rich theoretical and case-study grounding. The little preface 'bio-' seems to be about a kind of world-making equation for Bio[X] raised to the nth power, where citizens of the U.S., at least, find themselves with the obligation of health without the right to health, and with the technical means to extraordinary prowess in relation to the biomedical body without the financial means for many to pay for much humbler organic well being. This packed volume pulls astutely on the threads of many bio-knots to track questions of health and medicine in economic, cultural, and epistemological weaves. These essays are crucial for thinking about how difference and healthoand differences in healthoin the U.S. do and do not prepare one to travel responsibly trans-nationally. Donna Haraway, author of When Species Meet

Author Information

Adele E. Clarke is Professor of Sociology and History of Health Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Laura Mamo is Associate Professor at the Health Equity Institute for Research, Practice, and Policy at San Francisco State University. Jennifer Ruth Fosket is a principal and founder of Social Green, where she does research and writes on the intersections of health, the built environment, and sustainability. Jennifer R. Fishman is Assistant Professor in the Social Studies of Medicine Department at McGill University. Janet K. Shim is Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco.

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