Medicalization And Pharmaceuticalization By Scheper Hughes...

Medicalization and Pharmaceuticalization The â€Å"medicalization† of the Alto do Cruzeiro people and the â€Å"pharmaceuticalization† of the Vita patients enable a systematic and bureaucratically sanctioned control of these marginalized groups. These two concepts are as alike as they are different. Scheper-Hughes focuses on the â€Å"medicalization† of the working class in Alto do Cruzeiro. In her ethnography, medicalization is a tool of hegemony which brings forth a complicit and pacified workforce. Biehl’s â€Å"pharmaceuticalization† of the patients in the Vita asylum in the other hand is an exploitative moral technology that justifies and distances the familial/medical/political structure from bureaucratically organized deaths. Although the power structures and aims at play are different in these settings, medicalization and pharmaceuticalization both serve to abandon/pacify people without the locusts of power being morally and civilly held accountable. In Scheper-Hughes’s ethnography, â€Å"nervoso† is appropriated by medicine and transformed into an illness. Due to the biomedical model, this folk syndrome is made into a disease, through which its somatic symptoms can be medicated. Likewise, in Biehl’s ethnography, any symptom, whether it be somatic or psychological, is treated with pharmaceuticals. This enforcement of medicine is normalized and unquestioned because in both of these societies, although thirty years apart, biomedicalization is deeply entrenched. This is partly due to the