Editorial: In the Name of Health
Michel Foucault: The Birth of Social Medicine (in Danish)
In this lecture, the development of the medical system and the model adopted in the west beginning in the 18th century is discussed from three viewpoints: Biohistory, medicalization and health economics, and then deals in detail with the history of medicalization from the 19th century onwards, using the French example as a frame of reference. The working hypothesis of the author is that modern medicine is social medicine, and therefore a social practice that has been developing in capitalist society since the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, and this is responsible for three forms of medicine: State medicine, urban medicine and industrial medicine. He analyzes each of these forms of medicine and its relations to the current social structure in Germany, France and England, and explain why a bureaucratized, collectivized and state-controlled system of medicine developed in Germany from the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century; Urban medicine in France, based on methods of surveillance; and industrial medicine in England.
Nikolas Rose: Biopolitics in the Twenty First Century - Notes For a Research Agenda (in English)
In this paper I try to identify some of the dimensions for research into the biopolitics of the twenty first century, which, as Foucault remarks calls 'life itself' into question. I suggest three dimensions for such an exploration. The first concerns recent developments in the politics of genetic risks. The second concerns the changing truth regime of biomedicine and biotechnology, and the need to explore what I term 'molecular politics'. The third concerns the new technologies of the self that are being developed around issues of health and illness. I argue that human beings are increasingly becoming 'somatic individuals' whose personhood is defined - by themselves and by others - in terms of corporeality. This opens new relations between biology and conduct, and between biology and responsibility.
Lene Koch: Government of Genetic Risk Knowledge (in Danish)
The topic of the article is the new genetics. Using the disciplinary methods of government employed in classical eugenics as itsopposite, the new genetics is often legitimized by the claim that it governs by fundamentally different methods i.e. individual autonomy and informed consent. The article is inspired by foucauldian governmentality thinking and argues that genetic knowledge is increasingly governed by social and individual responsibility. Using this kind of thinking as its basis, the paper presents the concept of 'genetification' of concepts and practices related to health and illness including a new genetic ethics strongly coloured by social responsibility towards one's family and relatives.
Anders Petersen and Rasmus Willig: From Anomy to Recognition (in Danish)
It is argued that, within an analytical terminology, it is advisable to take the Durkheimian presumption seriously that the mental condition of society depends on its ability to generate normative integration. While Durkheim characterised his time as anomic due to the permanent competition and the violent economic fluctuations, is it here indicated that the contemporary economic idea of neo-liberalism will result in an intensified focus on depression and in an increase in the consumption of antidepressants. This is explained by the use of Alain Ehrenberg who analyses the normative content in depression and antidepressants and Christophe Dejours who connects the neo-liberal idea to a concept of suffering due to the lack of recognition. Durkheim has been criticised for not being able to provide a normative alternative to the anomic diagnosis. The article will point to Axel Honneth's social philosophical alternative, which, on the one hand, can help to explain the increased focus on depression and, on the other hand, act as a philosophical therapy.
Holger Højlund and Lars Thorup Larsen: The Healthy Community (in Danish)
The current problematization of social inequalities in health offers an opportunity to discuss Danish public health policies over the last few decades. An overview of the genealogy of the social question demonstrates how modern society has a certain tradition for being concerned with its own unity. It is claimed that the visions of an ethically based healthy community, which can be found in current health politics, can be understood as the latest developments in the genealogy of the social question. After having demonstrated the emergence of these unifying developments at a general level, it is shown how tensions between community and responsibility occur in the specific practical initiatives inaugurated in local societies, families, schools and workplaces.
Lisa Dahlager: The Power of Prevention (in Danish)
Taking as its point of departure Foucault's theories of government as conduct of conduct, the article defines key concepts within a strategy for an analytics of governmental technologies. The strategy is unfolded through an analysis of health promotion at Bispebjerg Hospital. It focuses on how government, in order to be effective, must have health professionals as the most important objects. Furthermore it focuses on what consequences this objectification can have on their relationship with the patients.
Interview with Axel Honneth: On the role of sociology in the theory of recognition (in Danish)
Michael Hviid Jacobsen: The Construction of Social Constructivism (in Danish)
Social constructivism is one of the most fiercely debated and disputed perspectives within contemporary sociology in particular as well as within the other social sciences in general. At the same time as criticisms almost incessantly are being launched against the perspective, social constructivism is simultaneously in the driving seat when it comes to discussions and definitions of an epistemological or ontological nature. Most of the attacks on social constructivism appear to be misplaced not because they lack justification which they might have, but because the notion of social constructivism due to its successful upsurge in the social sciences has become an obscured and notoriously ambiguous label for a variety of different perspectives. A terminological anarchy and conceptual confusion has meant that today almost anything can count as a social construction, which is a dangerous as well as a downright mistaken development. This article attempts to "sociologize" social constructivism by utilising two concrete examples of research areas, namely sexuality and death.
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