Health Social Movements

Catalog description

The medical profession and the scientific field of biomedicine enact a form of power that is pervasive in contemporary society. Medicine has created inequalities in who has access to increasingly expensive treatments, has given us new ways of understanding our identities, and has defined what it means to live a good life. This course explores how health social movements (HSMs) harness, resist, or otherwise engage with the power of biomedicine. The first of the course’s three modules asks what HSMs want. Students will read texts that demonstrate how HSMs strive for various goals including political recognition, resources, and policy reform. The second module considers the tactics that HSMs deploy to mediate the power of medicine. Case studies will demonstrate how HSMs mobilize expertise, the body, and emotion to achieve their ends. The final module zooms in to study the construct of the self, exploring how HSMs offer new repertoires, tools, and lenses for constructing identity. We will consider HSMs that fashion their members as consumers, citizens, and patients. Throughout the course, students will compare HSMs from course texts with ongoing social movements of which they may be a part.