Date: TBD

Time: TBD

CFP 29 - Regular: Medicalization as a Social Problem: A Tool of Oppression and Resistance
Room: TBD

Sponsors: Disability, Mental Wellness, and Social Justice
Social Problems Theory

Organizers: Melinda Leigh Maconi, Moffitt Cancer Center
Lily Ivanova, University of British Columbia

Presider: Lily Ivanova, University of British Columbia

Description: 

Medicalization offers a diagnosis, an explanation, and, in some cases, even an identity to people with disabilities and mental illness. However, these same diagnoses can function as tools of oppression, used to control and disenfranchise bodies and minds deemed too different or inconvenient by those in power. This session explores how medicalization is socially constructed both as a mechanism of colonization and as a site of resistance, and considers the ways in which medicalization itself can be understood as a social problem.

Papers:

“‘I Could Take My Social Work Hat Off… but, within the Context of Capitalism, That Does Not Feel Like an Option’: Transgender Social Workers’ Experiences of Identity Management,” A.P. Spoth, Evergreen State College

“How Markets Make and Tame Emotions: The Struggle of Evaluating Diffuse Psychedelic Experiences,” Isak Ladegaard, University of Hong Kong

“Receiving a Psychiatric Diagnosis in Adolescence: Appropriation, Negotiation, and Identity Recomposition in Relation to Biomedical Discourse,” Marie-Laurence Bordeleau-Payer and Benazir Rachida Khalimat, University of Quebec

“Seeking Solidarity: An Examination of Villains and the Role a Diagnosis Plays in Posts by People with Chronic Illnesses in Online Spaces,” Melinda Leigh Maconi, Moffitt Cancer Center

“The Medicalization of Pregnancy on Social Media: Authority, Risk, and Lived Experience in Instagram Representations of Prenatal Genetic Testing,” Sara Tehrani, Sofia Lahsaini, Crystal Chanthasone, Donia Fouissi and Shannon K. Carter, University of Central Florida

“The Rhetoric and Ideology of Medical Mistrust: A Content Analysis of the Natural Childbirth Movement,” Jayla Gray-Thomas and Stella Petkova, Rutgers University

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