Medicalization or Medicine as Culture? The Case of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

This chapter shifts the focus from cultural influences on health and disease to the operation of medicine as a cultural practice. Focusing on the condition of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), this chapter compares two approaches that produce different perspectives on the relationship between medical discourse, everyday life, and the boundaries of disease. The first framework is that of medicalization, a sociological theory that was developed to describe and criticize the expansion of medical authority into everyday life. The second approach, "medicine as culture," is less a single framework than a set of tools. This approach is also concerned with the influence of medicine on experiences of health and illness and notions of selfhood. Unlike medicalization theory, it suggests that medical styles of thought are internal to our experiences of contemporary selfhood and daily life. It also emphasizes the diversity and variability of medical practice and challenges the model of "Western medicine" as a unified and coherent entity.