Conflict and Complementarity: Medicalization, Criminalization, and the Question of Human Agency. Issue 7 (2nd July 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Rafalovich, Adam
• Is Part Of: Deviant behavior. Volume 41:Issue 7(2020)
• Page Start: 868
• Page End: 881
• Publication Date: 2020-07-02
• Subjects: Deviant behavior -- Periodicals; 302.54205
• DOI: 10.1080/01639625.2020.1734747
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0163-9625

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The social processes of criminalization and medicalization share important similarities, often complementing each other. Beginning from an analysis of their differences with regard to human agency, this essay provides a preliminary conversation for understanding the historical and contemporary relationship between criminalization and medicalization in Western society. This analysis encompasses three major aims: (1) we establish the difference between criminalization and medicalization with respect to the question of human agency; (2) we examine key legal concepts that elucidate how medicalized approaches to the question of agency influence the direction of criminal adjudication; and (3) we illustrate the ways in which criminalization encounters significant challenges to its institutional practices and thereby appropriates medicalized forms of social control. We conclude by positing that criminalization and medicalization operate as a social control matrix. As the analysis of the relationship between medicalization and criminalization is necessary at the discursive and institutional levels, we utilize multiple theoretical concepts, drawing from the work of Anthony Giddens. Emile Durkheim, Slavoj Žižek, and Michel Foucault.