COMS 2500 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Reductionism, Kfc, Medicalization

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Communication and Media Studies
• Course: COMS 2500
• Professor: Chris Russill

Document Summary

Guest lecturer: irena knezevic - advertising and promotion as medium of. Reductionism: the attempt to reduce complex interactions to isolated simple relations, when we apply scientific reductionism to complex things, we introduce black-boxing of phenomena, e(cid:454)a(cid:373)ple: the sto(cid:396)(cid:455) of ted"s (cid:272)a(cid:374)(cid:272)e(cid:396) Author of this article had kidney cancer, while his brother. He shared this story with people and the most common (cid:395)uestio(cid:374) he (cid:449)as asked (cid:449)as (cid:862)did ted s(cid:373)oke? (cid:863) i(cid:374)stead of his working class background, his occupation, etc. Ted worked in an industrial factory with cancer-causing chemicals. The (cid:396)edu(cid:272)tio(cid:374)isti(cid:272) (cid:395)uestio(cid:374) (cid:862)did he s(cid:373)oke? (cid:863) o(cid:271)s(cid:272)u(cid:396)es a complex and rich human life that people were looking at when they asked that question. Health: who definition of health: health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Healthism: medicalization (in contrast to the socioecological view of health) Disease mongering: medicalizing conditions like baldness.