Medicalization, control paradigm and power relations. Looking from the palliative society

Abstract

In this article we synthesize a interdisciplinary reflective dialogue on why medicines, and various pharmacologically active substances, are being used beyond illness, displacing their use towards the incessant search for well-being. This dialogue interwoven the ideas presented in a discussion at the VII Anthropology Week organized by the Catalan Institute of Anthropology in 2022. The session took as its starting point the book "The Palliative Society" by Byung-Chul Han published in Barcelona by editorial Herder, which proposes a renewed look at socio-medical phenomena such as medicalization, pharmaceuticalization and the medicationalization of life. Although medical anthropology knows the power relations that occur in health/disease/care processes and the biopsychosocial control that drugs can exert, the approach of "permanent well-being ideology" proposed by Byung-Chul Han delocalized this problem from health services and extends it to the social sphere since "the positivity of happiness supersedes the negativity of pain". In addition, this manuscript structures the bibliography of the theoretical frameworks that support the conversation, allowing readers to situate themselves in the references of the subject. Sessions like these talks promote the generation of critical knowledge in situations that challenge us as professionals in the anthropological and pharmaceutical fields. Through these reflective spaces it is possible to express and explain our positionality. Not against or in favor of pharmaceuticalization, but looking for a balanced and equanimous perspectives, in favor of the people who suffer, which counteracts blindness to the sociocultural causes of the illness and sickness.