Medicalization: a complex social process

Medicalization has featured as a central theme within the medical sociology literature since the 1970s, but has become contested in more recent years. This contestation has manifested as a key sociological debate concerning the extent to which medicalization should be understood as either a consequence of medical imperialism or as a complex social process involving other social actors. Drawing on the work of Conrad (2005) concerning contemporary drivers of medicalization, the paper argues that limiting our understanding of medicalization to a mere outcome of medical imperialism reduces the utility of the concept of medicalization in the sociological study of health and illness. An analysis of these contemporary drivers guided by both Weberian and Foucauldian inspired theories illuminates the complex social process by which medicalization occurs in contemporary society.