Journal Article

Medicalization: A Weberian and Foucauldian analysis

Benvenga, Luca

2025

Overview

This article examines the processes of medicalization and bio medicalization as key dynamics shaping contemporary relationships between body, health, and subjectivity. Drawing on sociological theories of rationalization, biopower, and social control, the paper analyses how health has progressively shifted from contingent condition to a permanent moral project. Through a theoretical framework informed by Weber’s concepts of disenchantment and re-enchantment and Foucault’s notion of biopower, the article shows how medical knowledge, technoscience, and market logics converge in producing normative standards of health and responsible self-care. Medicalization is interpreted not merely as the expansion of medical authority, but as a broader mechanism of governance that encourages self-monitoring, prevention, and performance-oriented lifestyles. While these processes promise autonomy and empowerment, they also contribute to the individualization of social problems, the moralization of illness, and the reinforcement of social inequalities. Health thus emerges as a privileged site where rationalization and symbolic meaning intersect, transforming care of the self into a socially regulated moral obligation rather than a purely biomedical concern.

• Publisher: Sciendo,De Gruyter Brill Sp. z o.o., Paradigm Publishing Services
• Subject: Bio medicalization / Biopower / Disenchantment / Health / medicalization / Re-enchantment