Defining deviant behavior in reductionist and medical language is believed to be a product of rationality-based Western cultures that are industrialized (or post-industrial), bureaucratic, generally secularized, and rooted in individualism, and is rare in non-Western, pre-industrial cultures (Conrad 1992). Medicalization refers to the process by which non-medical conditions become defined and treated as medical problems, usually in terms of illnesses and disorders (Conrad 1992). In short, medicalization is the process that awards jurisdiction of behavioral and social problems to the medical institution.
Using a medical rubric to frame social and behavior problems has a number of important implications and has been of concern to social scientists for many years. The main criticism of the medicalization process relevant to this study centers on the ways in which the medical model decontexualizes social problems and individual behavior (Waitzkin 1993). Classifying behavior and social conditions as an expression of illness is criticized as overly reductionistic and removes the social environment from having any influence on the condition. Bio-reductionism disallows not only social, economic, and political environmental factors in shaping behavior and social conditions, but also absolves them from responsibility for deviance. Because they are "ill," individuals' accountability for deviance is also removed by medicalization in that deviant acts are considered to be the behaviors of unwilling actors. Consequently, solutions to thus labeled personal and social problems rest in a medical technique that is believed to ameliorate the problem. The context in which that problem initially formed resists critical assessment, however.
This model has been successfully cultivated in the West where lay thought generally assumes that deviance occurs because of an individual defect or innate quality (Grieg 1996) that is amenable to rational, and individual-centered, treatment (Kirk 1972).
Using a medical rubric to frame social and behavior problems has a number of important implications and has been of concern to social scientists for many years. The main criticism of the medicalization process relevant to this study centers on the ways in which the medical model decontexualizes social problems and individual behavior (Waitzkin 1993). Classifying behavior and social conditions as an expression of illness is criticized as overly reductionistic and removes the social environment from having any influence on the condition. Bio-reductionism disallows not only social, economic, and political environmental factors in shaping behavior and social conditions, but also absolves them from responsibility for deviance. Because they are "ill," individuals' accountability for deviance is also removed by medicalization in that deviant acts are considered to be the behaviors of unwilling actors. Consequently, solutions to thus labeled personal and social problems rest in a medical technique that is believed to ameliorate the problem. The context in which that problem initially formed resists critical assessment, however.
This model has been successfully cultivated in the West where lay thought generally assumes that deviance occurs because of an individual defect or innate quality (Grieg 1996) that is amenable to rational, and individual-centered, treatment (Kirk 1972).
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