Types of medical social control.

Abstract

Summary In recent years there has been considerable interest in the social control aspects of medicine. While medical social control has been conceptualized in several ways, the concern here is with the medical control of deviant behavior, an aspect of what has been called the medicalization of deviance. Medical social control is defined as the ways in which medicine functions (wittingly or unwittingly) to secure adherence to social norms; specifically by using medical means or authority to minimize, eliminate or normalize deviant behavior. This paper catalogues and illustrates a broad range of medical control of deviance, and in so doing conceptualizes three major types of medical social control: medical technology, medical collaboration, and medical ideology. Numerous examples are provided for each. These concepts aid in revealing the breadth of medical social control and the extent and limitations of professional dominance over the medical social control of deviance.