Polycystic ovary syndrome, medical semantics, and the political ecology of health in India

Abstract

Within public health, investigations into the rise of metabolic syndrome disorders, such as obesity and type II diabetes, following on the heels of globalisation have tended to focus on the twin axes of diet and physical exercise. However, such a limited focus obscures wider transformations in bodily and health-related practices that emerge in response to globalisation. This paper is an exploration of public discourses about PCOS—a hormonal disorder that affects menstruation, is associated with obesity, heart disease, and type II diabetes, and has been on the rise in India since the liberalisation of its economy in 1991— and it examines the concerns regarding sociocultural, environmental, and political–economic changes brought by liberalisation that these discourses index. Attention to medical semantics, as revealed through public discourses about PCOS, can help counter the limited focus of diet and physical activity-centred models through an emphasis on the political ecology of health. Such engagement can reveal how an emerging relationship between the body and its environment, which is seen as characteristically modern, is implicated in the rise of metabolic disorders. It can also offer critical insights for biomedical and public health research into such disorders.