Medicalization and pharmaceuticalization at the intersections: Looking backward, sideways and forward

Medicalization studies have changed dramatically in the past decade in part due to the increased attention to the role of pharmaceuticals and the pharmaceutical industry in modern life. This review paper explores the relationship between the concepts of medicalization and the newly developed terms of pharmaceuticalization and the pharmaceuticalization of public health. We show how and why modernist thinking limits the terms' utility to explain a world in which both modern and postmodern objects and people interact with each other. We provide a framework for reconceptualizing and empirically studying these key processes of the 21st century.

► Highlights a critical juncture in medicalization, pharmaceuticalization and the pharmaceuticalization of public health.
► Demonstrates conceptual and empirical limits of studies of pharmaceuticalization and medicalization in the global North.
► Modernist thinking limits the analytic utility of medicalization and pharmaceuticalization.
► The agenda moving forward should include postmodern theories employed in empirical studies of the global North and South.