From Medicine to Health: The Proliferation and Diversification of Cultural Authority

In his account of the medical profession’s ascent, Paul Starr drew a distinction between the social authority of physicians and the cultural authority of medicine—between doctors’ capacity to direct others’ behavior and the ability of medical institutions and discourses to shape meanings of illness, health, wellness, and treatment. Subsequently, scholars have reflected on the social-structural transformations challenging physicians’ social authority but neglected shifts in cultural authority. Focusing on the United States, we find a proliferation and diversification of cultural authority, reflecting a partial movement from the domain of medicine into new terrains of health. This shift is apparent in the resurgence of alternative healing, the advent of new forms of self-care and self-monitoring, the rise of health social movements, and the spread of health information online. We advance a research agenda to understand how the mechanisms and dynamics of cultural authority shape contests to speak in the name of health.

Studying the Icarus Project Through Digital Bricolage: How Digital Platforms Reflect Shifting Strategies in a Social Movement Organization's Development

This article describes digital bricolage as a way to study the digital history of a social movement organization. Drawing from our separate research projects on The Icarus Project (TIP), we describe our respective strategies as a health humanities scholar and a journalist to trace the organization's evolution; and our research findings describe TIP's gradual shift from grassroots leadership to professional staff. In tracing TIP's digital evolution, we argue that digital bricolage can contribute to our understanding of digital organizing tactics used in modern health social movements.

Against alienation treatment, we stand for!

Who would be our most contemporary monsters? Who are the outcasts? Who are the ones that (or whom) we don’t want to speak about? The Brazilian society still has places where the established concept of human by Human Rights Standards seems not to be reaching. The so-called “legal asylums” or “judiciary asylums” are places that aggregate not only the “lunatics” but also the ones with mental disorders that additionally committed a crime. As a consequence, of these two main attributes, such persons are not remembered or considered worthy to be advocated, being under a moral judgment. With this in mind, this paper is focused on constructing a critical engagement with the Brazilian Mental Health issue, under the analysis of “legal asylums” and it aims to contribute to the epistemological aspect of the issue. In addition, it aims to bring up a mix of theoretical notions and paradigms about the Brazilian mental health struggle, as well as its political historical background both of the health professionals and patients social movements. Mental Health Social Movements can be understood as an individual and institutional response to stop producing and reproducing inequalities and discrimination, and a path towards a more inclusive society.

Υγεία και κοινωνικά κινήματα: η αμφισβήτηση της ορθόδοξης ιατρικής

<p>The aim of the present paper is to map the territory<br />of health social movements and to examine<br />the demands they make as well as the<br />factors that contributed in their emergence<br />and strengthening. The increasing scientization<br />of decision-making process in the exercise<br />of health policy and the dominant role of<br />medical authority and power in doctor-patient<br />relationship constituted two important points<br />on which the criticism and contest of these<br />movements focused. The basic working hypothesis<br />is that health social movements call<br />into question the primacy and infallibility of<br />the orthodox medicine, which is based on the<br />dominant biomedical model in western societies<br />and challenge the institutional and cultural<br />framework of health policy formation.</p>