Theory and SocietyPub Date : 2025-01-01Epub Date: 2025-03-03DOI: 10.1007/s11186-025-09611-9
Michael Halpin, Dagoberto Cortez
{"title":"Rethinking medicalization: unequal relations, hegemonic medicalization, and the medicalizing dividend.","authors":"Michael Halpin, Dagoberto Cortez","doi":"10.1007/s11186-025-09611-9","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11186-025-09611-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Medicalization is an important theory that has been subject to numerous debates. Drawing on three varied datasets, we forward a relational approach to medicalization that responds to critiques while aiming to reinvigorate the theory with new concepts and questions. In contrast to prior process-based work, our relational approach argues that medicalization is best understood as an action or activity undertaken by specific groups or actors. We further suggest that unequal relations characterize medicalization. Specifically, we argue that 1) groups or actors receive a benefit from participating in medicalization, which we call the medicalizing dividend and, 2) an actor/group occupies a hegemonic position in medicalizing relations, reaping the largest dividend and constraining other actors. While we assert that pharmaceutical companies are currently hegemonic, we argue that their hegemony is not indefinite. We discuss how our approach facilitates links between medicalization and other theories, while outlining future steps for medicalization research.</p>","PeriodicalId":48137,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Society","volume":"54 2","pages":"243-276"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12062157/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144018243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dating in captivity: creativity, digital affordance, and the organization of interaction in online dating during quarantine","authors":"Kaiting Zhou","doi":"10.1007/s11186-023-09538-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-023-09538-z","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48137,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Society","volume":"63 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139385891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The theory and function of Marxian water rent in the United States","authors":"J. T. Mueller","doi":"10.1007/s11186-023-09537-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-023-09537-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48137,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Society","volume":"75 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139386251","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Correction to: Reimagining modern politics in the European mountains: confronting the traditional commons with the neo‑rural conception of the common good","authors":"I. Vaccaro, O. Beltran, Camila Del Mármol","doi":"10.1007/s11186-023-09535-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-023-09535-2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48137,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Society","volume":"78 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138595976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What counts as investment? Productive and unproductive expenditures","authors":"Fred Block","doi":"10.1007/s11186-023-09534-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-023-09534-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48137,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Society","volume":"1 1","pages":"1-23"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2023-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139262031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The gates to the profession are open: the alternative institutionalization of data science","authors":"Netta Avnoon","doi":"10.1007/s11186-023-09529-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-023-09529-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48137,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Society","volume":"27 10","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135433047","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Defiant conformists: gender and resistance against genocide","authors":"Kiran Stallone, Robert Braun","doi":"10.1007/s11186-023-09532-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-023-09532-5","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article argues that college-educated women play a crucial part in successful resistance against genocide because they are more likely to forge secure interregional networks and, consequently, better able to shelter victims of mass-persecution than their male peers. We develop our argument through a study of Jewish rescue networks in the Netherlands during the Holocaust. College-educated women were especially valuable during rescue efforts due to their ability to operate as defiant conformists . These women – a small minority who were anything but traditional – could more fully exploit their biographical availability and university networks by concealing interregional resistance work through the strategic performance of traditional feminine roles. Statistical analyses of geocoded rescue networks reveal that rescue networks involving college-educated women were more successful because they funneled Jews across the country without getting exposed. More in-depth exploration of distinct networks identifies three dramaturgical strategies that college-educated women deployed to facilitate clandestine and geographically expansive rescue work: 1) strategic coquetry; 2) strategic self-devaluation; 3) strategic motherhood and wedlock. Taken together, our findings suggest we should focus on how gender and other forms of social status interact to produce the relational and dramaturgical underpinnings of civilian agency in times of emergency.","PeriodicalId":48137,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Society","volume":"37 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135480297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Creating and maintaining an alternative public sphere: The struggles of social justice feminism, 1899–1925","authors":"John Thomas McGuire","doi":"10.1007/s11186-023-09531-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-023-09531-6","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48137,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Society","volume":"18 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135773420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The domestic violence victim as COVID crisis figure","authors":"Paige L. Sweet, Maya C. Glenn, Jacob Caponi","doi":"10.1007/s11186-023-09533-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-023-09533-4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48137,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Society","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135871265","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}