Abstract
Medicalization has become a central analytical theme in medical sociology, a topic in medical sociology courses and the subject of hundreds if not thousands of articles (Conrad, 2007; Ballard & Elston, 2005; Clarke et al., 2010). Other scholars, including historians (Nye, 2003), anthropologists (Lock, 2001; Press, 2006), medical and public health researchers (Metzl & Herzig, 2007; Maloney et al., 2011; Lantz et al., 2007), economists (Thorpe & Philwaw, 2012), bioethicists (Parens, 2011), and even literary scholars (Lane, 2007) have also examined medicalization. Medicalization has been the subject of newspaper and magazine commentaries (e.g. Welch, 2010) and discussion at President’s Council on Bioethics (2003). It seems clear that medicalization has become a topic of interest beyond sociology. Within medical sociology it is a concept that has moved from the periphery of intellectual interest in the 1970s to a central area of interest in the twenty-first century.