Medicalization practices: conceptual problematizations from Michel Foucault

Abstract

The practices of medicalization have been studied by several authors and with different nuances and perspectives, depending on the analyzes performed and the authors chosen for the problematic and conceptual field. Thinking practices in a theoretical essay format is an objective of this article, formulated in a strand of the works of Michel Foucault and other thinkers, who researched and delimited the processes of medicalization as an object of study. Therefore, it is worth mentioning how much controversy and paradoxes are installed in the face of attempts to present and address the present thematic field of research regarding medicalization practices. In this text, some elements of medicalization are presented, such as: biopolitics; bioeconomics, biovalue, biotechnologies, pharmacologicalization, pathologization and biosociality in order to forge an analytical power and knowledge in contemporary society, demanding more work with training a network of work.