Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Prescribing Relational Subjectivities

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Gendering Drugs

Abstract

The project that triggered this book was named “Prescriptive Prescriptions. Pharmaceuticals and ‘Healthy’ Subjectivities.” As discussed in Chap. 1, Introduction, our initial task was to map out and explore how pharmaceuticals were prescribing healthy subject positions for the individuals targeted by them. But pharmaceuticals do much more than prescribe healthy personhood. They also prescribe healthy social relationships whose very existence and enactment can be imagined as requiring the consumption of a prescription medication. The two chapters in this part detail how this is done discursively by focusing on commercial images and texts used to market and sell Alzheimer’s, prostate and human papillomavirus pharmaceuticals.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Ahmed, S. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotions. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Applbaum, K. 2006. Educating for Global Mental Health: The Adoption of SSRIs in Japan. In Global Pharmaceuticals. Ethics, Markets, Practices, ed. Adriana Petryna, Andrew Lakoff, and Arthur Kleinman, 85–110. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Åsberg, C., and E. Johnson. 2009. Viagra Selfhood: Pharmaceutical Advertising and the Visual Formation of Swedish Masculinity. Health Care Analysis 17(2): 144–159.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2016. Viagra Selfhood: Pharmaceutical Advertising and the Visual Formations of Swedish Masculinity. In Glocal Pharma. International Brands and the Imagination of Local Masculinity, ed. E. Johnson, E. Sjögren, and C. Åsberg, 88–99. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Åsberg, C., and J. Lum. 2009. PharmAD-Ventures: A Feminist Analysis of the Pharmacological Imaginary of Alzheimers Disease. Body & Society 15(4): 95–117.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the Universe Half-way. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Biehl, Joao. 2006. Pharmaceutical Governance. In Global Pharmaceuticals. Ethics, Markets, Practices, ed. Adriana Petryna, Andrew Lakoff, and Arthur Kleinman, 206–239. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bleier, Ruth. 1984. Science and Gender: A Critique of Biology and Its Theories on Women. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boston Women’s Health Book Collective. 1971. Our Bodies, Our Selves. New York: Simon & Schuster.

    Google Scholar 

  • Braidotti, Rosi. 1994. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bryld, Mette, and Nina Lykke. 2000. Cosmodolphins. Feminist Cultural Studies of Technology, Animals and the Sacred. London: ZED Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cacchioni, T. 2015. Big Pharma, Women and the Labour of Love. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Callon, M., and J. Law. 1995. Agency and the Hybrid Collectif. South Atlantic Quarterly 94: 481–507.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clarke, A., L. Mamo, J.R. Fosket, J.R. Fishman, and J.K. Shim, ed. 2010. Biomedicalization. Technoscience, Health and Illness in the U.S. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conrad, Peter. 2007. The Medicalization of Society. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, K. 1997. Embodied Practices: Feminist Perspectives on the Body. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Dijck, Jose. 1998. Imagenation. Popular Images of Genetics. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ehrenreich, B., and D. English. 1978. For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts’ Advice to Women, Anchor Books. New York: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elliott, Carl. 2003. Better than Well. American Medicine Meets the American Dream. New York: W.W. Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Epstein, S. 2007. Inclusion. The Politics of Difference in Medical Research. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Fox, Renée. 1977. The Medicalization and Demedicalization of American Society. Daedalus 106(1): 9–22.

    Google Scholar 

  • Franklin, S., C. Lury, and J. Stacey, ed. 1991. Off-Centre: Feminism and Cultural Studies. London: Harper Collins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Franklin, Sarah, Celia Lury, and Jackie Stacey. 2000. Global Nature, Global Culture. London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabe, J., S. William, Paul Martin, and C. Coveney. 2015. Pharmaceuticals and Society. Power, Promises and Prospects. Social Science and Medicine 131: 193–198.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, Donna. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse™ Feminism and Technoscience. New York and London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harding, S. 1986. The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Illich, Ivan. 1975. Limits to Medicine/Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health. London: Marion Boyars.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacobsen, S.J., D.J. Jacobson, C.J. Girman, R.O. Roberts, T. Rhodes, H.A. Guess, and M.M. Lieber. 1999. Treatment for Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia among Community Dwelling Men: The Olmsted County Study of Urinary Symptoms and Health Status. Journal of Urology 162(4): 1301–1306.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, E., and C. Åsberg. 2016. Enrolling Men, Their Doctors and Partners: Individual and Collective Responses to Erectile Dysfunction. In Glocal Pharma. International Brands and the Imagination of Local Masculinity, ed. E. Johnson, E. Sjögren, and C. Åsberg, 75–88. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, E., E. Sjögren, and C. Åsberg. 2016. Glocal Pharma. International Brands and the Imagination of Local Masculinity. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Katz, S., and T. Calasanti. 2015. Critical Perspectives on Successful Ageing: Does It ‘Appeal More Than It Illuminates’? The Gerontologist 55(1): 26–33.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1992. Secrets of Life, Secrets of Death. Essays on Language, Gender and Science. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Klinge, Ineke. 1997. Female Bodies and Brittle Bones: Medical Interventions in Osteoporosis. In Embodied Practices. Feminist Perspectives on the Body, ed. Kathy Davis, 59–72. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Latour, B. 1999. Pandora’s Hope. Essays on the Reality of Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lum, Jennifer. 2006. “It’s Not Her, It’s the Disease”: Towards a Cartography of Scientific and Popular Cultures of Alzheimer’s Disease. MA thesis, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lykke, Nina. 2002. Feminist Cultural Studies of Technoscience and Other Cyborg Studies: A Cartography. The Making of European Women’s Studies 4: 133–143.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mamo, Laura, and Jennifer Fishman. 2001. Potency in All the Right Places: Viagra as a Technology of the Gendered Body. Body & Society 7(4): 13–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marshall, Barbara. 2006. The New Virility: Viagra, Male Ageing and Sexual Function. Sexualities 9(3): 345–362.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meinert, Curtis L. 2001. The Inclusion of Women in Medical Trials. In The Gender and Science Reader, ed. Muriel Ledermanand Ingrid Bartsch, 303–306. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mol, A. 2002. The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Oudshoorn, Nelly. 1994. Beyond the Natural Body: An Archeology of Sex Hormones. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Petchesky, Rosalind Pollack. 1986. Abortion and Women’s Choice. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Petryna, Adrianna. 2006. Globalizing Human Subjects Research. In Global Pharmaceuticals. Ethics, Markets, Practices, ed. Adriana Petryna, Andrew Lakoff, and Arthur Kleinman, 1–32. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Puig de la Bellacasa, Mearia. 2011. Matters of Care in Technoscience. Assembling Neglected Things. Social Studies of Science 41(1): 86–106.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roberts, C. 2015. Puberty in Crisis. The Sociology of Early Sexual Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N., and C. Novas. 2004. Biological Citizenship. In Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics and Ethics as Anthropological Problems, ed. A. Ong and S. Collier, 439–463. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sontag, S. 1978. Illness as Metaphor. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stafford, Barbara M. 1991. Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1996. Good Looking: Essays on the Virtue of Images. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Storey, John. 1993. An Introduction to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. Hemel Hempstead and New York: Prentice Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tiefer, Leonore. 2006. The Viagra Phenomenon. Sexualities 9(3): 273–294.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Traweek, S. 1992. Beamtimes and Lifetimes. The World of High Energy Physics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tronto, Joan C. 1993. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vares, T., and V. Braun. 2006. Spreading the Word, But What Word Is That? Viagra and Male Sexuality in Popular Culture. Sexualities 9(3): 315–332.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Viseu, A., N. Myers, and A. Martin, eds. 2015. The Politics of Care in Technoscience. Special volume, Social Studies of Science 45(5): 625–641.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, Simon J., Paul Martin, and Jonathan Gabe. 2011. The Pharmaceuticalisation of Society? A Framework for Analysis. Sociology of Health and Illness 33(5): 710–725.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Thematic Studies, Technology and Social Change, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Ericka Johnson

  2. Department of Thematic Studies, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Cecilia Åsberg

Authors
  1. Ericka Johnson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Cecilia Åsberg
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Technology and Social Change, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Ericka Johnson

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Johnson, E., Åsberg, C. (2017). Prescribing Relational Subjectivities. In: Johnson, E. (eds) Gendering Drugs. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51487-1_5

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51487-1_5

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51486-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51487-1

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation