SOC 2101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Michel Foucault, Medicalization

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 2101
• Professor: Louise Chartrand

Document Summary

These approaches were characterized by their emphasis on the importance of individual freedom, human rights and social changed. Research carried out exploring the doctor-patient relationship from this perspective has tended to focus on the ways that medical consultations facilitate the power of doctors over patients and support capitalist ideologies. Medical knowledge is not simply given or objective set of facts but is a belief system shaped through social and political relations (not just subjective) Power is not a possession of particular social groups, but is relational, a strategy which is invested in and transmitted through all social groups. Doctors are not considered to be figures of domination, but rather links in a set of power relations people though whom power passes or who are important in the fields of power relations. Example: smoking used to be so common but now with power now no one smokes, makes you do stuff without you realizing.