The term medicalization in the studies by Illich and Foucault was analyzed, in order to provide conceptual tools for studying movements that contest medicalization. Illich addressed hypertrophy of medicalization in modern life by emphasizing the effect of reductions of subjects' autonomy, especially through the fact that medical institutions take on the responsibility of treating pain, thus turning its intimate and personal meaning into a technical problem. Foucault approaches medicalization from the notion of biopower, and in examining the concept of governmentality, he made it possible to analyze individuals' ways of resisting the wielding of that power. Both works were concerned with proposing forms of exercising freedom, although Foucault did this in a more detailed and diversified manner. They both seem appropriate for reflecting on the current process of demedicalization or situations in which the medical diagnosis is rejected by the patient or members of his family.
Collective health; Medicalization; Autonomy; Biopower