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The Palgrave Handbook of Social Theory in Health, Illness and Medicine pp 306–323Cite as

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Ivan Illich and Irving Kenneth Zola: Disabling Médicalisation

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Abstract

Médicalisation has been one of medical sociology’s most important concepts. It has been studied by a wide variety of scholars and has generated a rich literature, complete with an extensive array of case studies and historiography. Much of this work has been directed to exploring the process by which medical definitions and treatments are applied to behaviours, minds and bodies in areas not previously defined or treated as medical matters. Deviant behaviour, reproductive matters and borderland medical conditions have often been the focus of research. More recent efforts to extend médicalisation theory have aimed to capture additional features of the ever-more complex interweaving of health and medicine into everyday life. We seem to be living under a ‘regime of total health’ (Armstrong 1993) and a medicine without limits.

Keywords

  • Social Control
  • Human Dignity
  • Human Good
  • Disability Study
  • Medical Sociology

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Authors
  1. Joseph E. Davis
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Associate Professor, University of Sydney, Australia

    Fran Collyer

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© 2015 Joseph E. Davis

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Davis, J.E. (2015). Ivan Illich and Irving Kenneth Zola: Disabling Médicalisation. In: Collyer, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Social Theory in Health, Illness and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137355621_20

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