Date of Award
5-1-2010
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in Sociology
Department
Sociology and Anthropology
First Advisor
Gary Long
Second Advisor
Jeff Jackson
Third Advisor
John Sonnett
Relational Format
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
In this thesis, I have undertaken a sociology of knowledge study pertaining to the corporate construction of psychiatric knowledge in relation to biomedicalization. I have conceptually connected the “crisis of representation” in psychiatry with the larger alteration of knowledge within postmodernity. I have defined postmodernity as itself a more general “crisis of representation.” Both of these representational crises are viewed as emerging from the transformation of political economic realities in the course of the twentieth-century. A discussion is undertaken to explicate the nature of this transformation and its relation to previous analogous transformations. I have undertaken a content analysis study of pharmaceutical advertisements for psychopharmacological drugs in medical journal advertisements between 1955 and 1970. Through this empirical study, I have demonstrated that instances of biomedicalization can be observed in pharmaceutical advertisements during this time period.
Recommended Citation
Whitaker, James Andrew, "Representational crisis in psychiatry : corporate hegemony and postmodern knowledge" (2010). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3476.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/3476