*9: Medicalization of Life

Contrast Ferdinand Tönnies' concepts of Gemeinschaft vs. Gesellschaft regarding social bonds and health context.

• Gemeinschaft: Close, intimate community networks where people are treated as ends in themselves; characterized by strong ties and emotional learning.

• Gesellschaft: Impersonal, temporary relations built purely on individual calculation, needs, and self-interest.

Explain the concept of the "Individualization of Society" under globalization and neoliberalism.

A major shift where traditional structural group bonds (family, class, union) fragment, forcing individuals to become entirely autonomous and responsible for their own lives and health risks.

Define a "do-it-yourself biography" / "risk biography" and state its structural implications.

The postmodern expectation that individuals have the right and duty to make personal health choices. If the choices fail, it is blamed entirely on the individual, dissolving accountability for wealthy or powerful institutions.

According to Émile Durkheim, how did the rise of capitalism impact social cohesion, and what is the "cult of the individual"?

As secularism grew and the fall of religion eroded traditional collective conscience, human persons became treated as sacred, possessing inherent dignity and moral worth through a culture of rational-scientific thinking.

Explain the idea of "Regimen and Control" within the biomedical machine metaphor.

Treating our bodies as "biological machines" where we are personally responsible for care and maintenance (via diet, exercise, stress tracking, and routine screenings) to avoid structural risk factors.

Contrast Essentialism vs. Social Constructionism using the lens of health sociology.

• Essentialism: Belief that social phenomena are natural, true, universal, and objectively determined by biology.

• Social Constructionism: Belief that health, illness, and traits are not natural but are actively created, defined, and shifted over time by a specific culture or society.

List the 5 core ideas that define the historic Biomedical Model

1) Mind-body dualism

2) Physical reductionism

3) Specific etiology

4) Machine metaphor

5) Regimen and control.

How does Michel Foucault link modern medicine to systems of social control?

Medicine has effectively replaced the Church as the primary institution of social control. By managing ideas of normalcy via internalized scientific definitions ("healthy" vs. "sick"), power relations govern populations without needing physical punishment.

Define Foucault's concepts of the "Medical Gaze" and "Biopower"

• Medical Gaze: How doctors evaluate patients purely as a disconnected system of broken biological pieces while ignoring their personal life history.

• Biopower: The systemic connection between institutionalized medical knowledge and political/social power to discipline human bodies.

Define "Androcentric Medicine" and state how it targets women's physiological processes.

Medicine where the ideal male body is treated as the universal biological norm. Consequently, normal female life stages (menstruation, pregnancy, menopause) are pathologized as medical conditions requiring technological interventions.

What is gynocentric medicine & how does it differ from androcentric medicine?

Form of medicine where the baseline standard is the female body, and female lived experiences.

• Processes like menstruation and pregnancy are seen as natural, holistic processes

• Targets female-specific pathways, conditions, and drug reactions.

Name Peter Conrad's Three Levels of Medicalization and define each.

Conceptual level: a medical vocabulary (or model) is used to define a problem

Institutional level: organizations adopt a medical approach to treating a problem

Interactional level: occurs as part of doctor–patient interaction