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183705

Medicalization

Thomas Abrams

pp. 45-74

Abstract

Chapter 3 reconsiders disability studies' founding concern with medicine through Heidegger's phenomenology. I suggest Heidegger's reframing of truth as disclosedness, or the Greek Aletheia, lets us reframe these concerns along his fundamental ontology. After outlining Heidegger's understanding of truth, I review the relevant literature, looking to the social model of disability, other phenomenological approaches, and similar, but more recent, interpretive perspectives. I suggest that medicalization not only refers to medical practices, but models that see disability only in terms of restricted function. I make sense of this using the case of rehabilitation science, and three measures employed therein. Two are numerical measures; the interview is the third. I end by discussing future work in rehabilitation.

Publication details

Published in:

Abrams Thomas (2016) Heidegger and the politics of disablement. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 45-74

Full citation:

Abrams Thomas (2016) Medicalization, In: Heidegger and the politics of disablement, Dordrecht, Springer, 45–74.