THE MEDICALIZATION OF SOCIETY: ON THE TRANSFORMATION OF HUMAN CONDITIONS INTO TREATABLE DISORDERS/SOCIOLOGY AND MEDICINE: SELECTED ESSAYS BY P.M. STRONG

THE MEDICALIZATION OF SOCIETY: ON THE TRANSFORMATION OF HUMAN CONDITIONS INTO TREATABLE DISORDERS Peter Conrad Baltimore MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press 2007, PB 204 pp, AUD 34.95 ISBN 978-0-8018-8585-3

SOCIOLOGY AND MEDICINE: SELECTED ESSAYS BY P.M. STRONG Anne Murcott (ed) Aldershot UK: Ashgate 2006, HB 296 pp, GBP 55.00 ISBN 978-0-7546-3844-5

Susie Scott

Department of Sociology

University of Sussex

United Kingdom

Sciology has a long-standing, and complex elationship with medicine. Its role has een variously critical, exploratory, cautious and revelatory, creating many opportunities for dialogue between the two disciplines. Now two books are published which comment on the dimensions of this relationship, drawing on empirical studies, theoretical debates and analytical methodologies.

Peter Conrad's The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders, revisits a classic debate within sociology. The medicalisation thesis refers to the extent to which medicine is encroaching upon everyday life as more and more non-medical, arguably social problems come to be re-defined as illnesses or disorders (Zola 1972; Conrad and Schneider 1980). Conrad himself has contributed greatly to this debate throughout the past thirty years, publishing papers on the medicalisation of hyperactivity in children, homosexuality, and other forms of what he sees as 'deviant' social behaviour, as well as his classic book, co-authored with Joseph Schneider in 1980. In this new volume, Conrad brings together data from these and more recent studies, demonstrating the continuing relevance of the medicalisation thesis to social and political thought.

The structure of the book is balanced and logical. Conrad begins with a definition of médicalisation, its key concepts and some recent examples: the médicalisation of obesity, Pre-Menstrual Syndrome, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and so on. He then examines four case studies, each of which demonstrates a unique conceptual dimension of medicalisation: its extension from 'female' problems to those affecting both genders; its diagnostic expansion to affect larger sections of the population; biomedical enhancement of the body through growth hormones and surgery; and the continuity or re-medicalisation of conditions that had been de-medicalised, namely homosexuality. The final section of the book considers some methodological issues, social consequences and policy implications associated with the medicalisation of society: if indeed such a process is taking place.

The four empirical chapters comprise the majority of the...