Adrián Cannellotto and Erwin Luchtenberg (eds.), Medicalizacion y sociedad: lecturas criticas sobre la construccion social de enfermedades, UNSAM Edita, 2010
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17101
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2038-3460
17101
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Roberto Lusardi
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Adrián Cannellotto and Erwin Luchtenberg (eds.), Medicalization and Society: Critical Readings on the Social Construction of Diseases, UNSAM Edita, 2010
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Book Reviews
2013-07-12
2023-06-02
2013-07-12
2023-07-17
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TS
Roberto Lusardi
2013/07/12
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17101
203
University of Parma
2038-3460
1
en
205
Adrián Cannellotto and Erwin Luchtenberg (eds.), Medicalization and Society: Critical Readings on the Social Construction of Diseases, UNSAM Edita, 2010
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17101/16037
4
Book Review                                                               203
Adrián Cannellotto and Erwin Luchtenberg (Eds.)
Medicalizacion y sociedad: lecturas criticas sobre la construccion social de
enfermedades [Medicalization and Society: Critical Readings on the
Social Construction of Diseases]
San Martín, Pcia. de Buenos Aires, UNSAM Edita, Universidad Na-
cional de San Martin, 2010, pp. 189
   !
Roberto Lusardi University of Parma
    !
    The book edited by Adrián Cannellotto and Edwin Luchtenberg pre-
sents the results of a research project sponsored by two Argentinian insti-
tutions, the Universidad Nacional de San Martín and the Observatorio
Argentino de Drogas (SEDRONAR). The research topic and the book
main issue is the process of medicalization and its correlation with the
wider social scene. This common thread is stated in the title of the vol-
ume: “Medicalization and society. Critical readings on the social con-
struction of diseases”. However, the title hides some characteristic aspects
of the book and contains a promise which is only partially fulfilled. Let’s
start from what is concealed. Two further aspects characterize this vol-
ume and they can attract the interest of specific audiences of readers:
primarily, the context in which the authors observe the forms of medical-
ization is limited and relates to mental illness and mental health; secondly,
the volume moves from the South American scientific debate, integrated
with insights provided by international scientific literature, and it contains
critical approaches to medicalization from this epistemic framework.
These statements better define the objective of the book and make it
more identifiable for readers. Instead, the partially unfinished promise
refers to the expectation, contained in the title, of an analysis of processes
of social construction of diseases and the practice of medicalization. This
purpose, which makes the volume particularly appealing to an audience
interested in the sociology of medicine, is only partially confirmed in the
pages of the book. The book approach tends to be more descriptive and
normative rather than analytic, leaving the generative dynamics of the
cure process in the background. The book consists of six chapters, linked
in various ways to the issue of medicalization. The first two chapters pro-
vide an overview of the forms that medicalization plays in contemporary
society, starting from the definition of the object as a process of coloniza-
tion of every sphere of human life carried out by medical professionals
and institutions. The argument moves to reconcile the analysis of scholars
in the field of sociology of medicine such as Engelhardt and Conrad, with
the indications of international institutions such as the WHO, aimed at
reducing inequality and poverty, and the experiences of the community
model for the treatment of mental diseases. The crisis of the biomedical
model, according to which any (mental or physical) health problem is re-
duced to biological or patho-physiological reasons, seems to leave the
204                                                           Tecnoscienza - 4(1)

possibility for new approaches of intervention in the area of health. How-
ever, the process of medicalization impedes such innovations due to the
complex ramifications of power relationships and interests that it has es-
tablished in contemporary society.
    The next two chapters show how medicalization acts in two specific
areas of mental health: drug abuse and Attention-Deficit / Hyperactivity
Disorder (ADHD). These areas become contexts through which the in-
terweaving social pressures, scientific knowledge, industrial interests and
corporate policies are highlighted and through which the contemporary
forms of the medicalization process are generated. The treatment of the
abuse of psychoactive substances is defined as a paradigmatic case of so-
cial control of deviance. The medicalization of addiction is not only a
means of control of consumption practices; it also produces forms of so-
cial segregation and confinement of certain social categories through the
legislative criminalization of such conducts.
    It is possible to speak of “medicalization of social problems”. Echoing
Foucault, these processes meet the intent of neoliberal purpose to ensure
social stability through the introduction of infrastructures and practices
to limit the deviance. Medicalization thus constitutes one of the most im-
portant manifestations of “biopower”. The next chapter describes what
the author calls the “medicalization of childhood” through the inclusion
of attention disorders of children, which seem to become increasingly
prevalent in contemporary society, in the field of medical and psychiatric
diagnosis and treatment. The essay shows the tension between two main
interpretations of inattention and hyperactivity: first, these aspects may
signal the existence of a disease caused by a variety of organic causes, and
second, these are reduced to signs of conflicts that transcend the child
himself and concern his socio-cultural environment. The two interpreta-
tions give rise to two opposed courses of action: in the first case, the re-
sult is pharmacological intervention for the active management of behav-
iour; in the second, the result is educational intervention intended to re-
move the social causes that contribute to generating the conflict in the
child. A confirmation of the weight exerted by the social dimension of the
process of diagnostic labelling of the disease is given by the number of
American studies that have shown that the diagnosis of ADHD is particu-
larly common among the poorer classes of the population. Medicalization
thus allows inclusion in the sphere of the “pathological” of certain behav-
iour which is deemed inappropriate. This also legitimizes actions of indi-
vidual control through pharmacological containment targeted at restoring
the social order.
    The last two chapters do not deal directly with the process of medical-
ization, but the historical evolution of the organization of healthcare insti-
tutions in Argentina, with the reporting of relevant critical issues still un-
resolved. The historical excursus runs through a century of Argentinian
health and social services, showing the complex articulation of a building
process that has gone through the different stages in the history of the
Book Review                                                              205
South American country. In particular, it has been noted how the State
and the public institutions have taken very different roles, depending on
the different historical periods. This discontinuous evolutionary trajectory
seems to have led to what the authors identify as the main unresolved
problems in the country: the continuing phenomenon in wide areas of the
nation of low degrees of integration between public services and private
structures, which tends to exclude a large part of the population of Ar-
gentina from access to health services.
    !
    !
                                   ***
!
!
Helga Nowotny and Giuseppe Testa
Naked Genes: Reinventing the Human in the Molecular Age
Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 2011, pp. 152
  !
Federico Neresini, University of Padova
    This book – originally published in German in 2009 – is a good book
for many reasons, but one of them prevails over all the others: it was writ-
ten really together by two different authors, a crucial aspect for assessing
the quality of the book, not so much in terms of style as in terms of con-
tent. There are obviously many other books written by two authors, but
this one is a real novelty as the authors belong to two different fields of
study, which are often, and wrongly, contrasting. It is also true that books
co-written by authors coming from two different disciplinary fields are
not so uncommon; however, those in which the two authors do not simp-
ly apply their own individual knowledge or offer the reader a mere juxta-
position of their points of view, and instead create a text that is the genu-
ine result of amalgamation and harmonization free from compromise,
that is a real rarity. And such is the case of this book.
    Helga Nowotny, in fact, is one of the best examples of what happens
when Science and Technology Studies (STS) take science seriously;
Giuseppe Testa, on the other hand, belongs to the much smaller group of
scientists that take STS seriously, considering them worthy of attention
without superficially dismissing them with the accusation of being relativ-
ist and without unreasonably snubbing them as enemies of science. As
Latour noted, to claim that STS scholars are against science would be the
same as calling “biologists anti-life, astronomers anti-stars, immunologists
anti-antibodies” (1999, 2).
    STS being taken seriously by a scientist produces, among other things,
a balancing effect that we are not used to, since STS are becoming an
“object” of study the same way that science is an “object” of study for
