Medykalizacja a genetyzacja: ciągłość czy zmiana?
Medicalization and geneticization: Consistency or change?

Summary/Abstract: Although the concept of medicalization belongs to the classical concepts of medical sociology, the progress of genetic knowledge and the development of new biotechnologies extend its rangeto include the concept of geneticization. Many authors suggest that in the 21st century genetics has ceased to be a mere science and has become a unique idea, a new way of interpreting the world, where basic genetic notions serve to explain health and disease, define norms, deviances, and identity, while ways of thinking in terms of genetic reductionism, and determinism, fatalism and essentialism replace other forms of interpretations of biological, social and cultural phenomena. Thus, this paper aims to reconstruct the concept of geneticization coined by Abby Lippman in the early 1990s. Beginning with the concept of medicalization it shows its intellectual background and the main fields of research. It also critically evaluates the concept of geneticization and tries to answer whether it brings a new insight into research or whether it should be regarded as part of larger medicalization processes.

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