Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness [Paperback]

Peter Conrad (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 1992

This classic text on the nature of deviance, originally published in 1980, is now reissued with a new Afterword by the authors. In this new edition of their award-winning book, Conrad and Schneider investigate the origins and contemporary consequences of the medicalization of deviance. They examine specific cases of madness, alcoholism, opiate addiction, homosexuality, delinquency, and child abuse and draw out their theoretical and policy implications. In a new chapter, the authors address developments in the last decade including AIDS, domestic violence, co-dependency, hyperactivity in children, and learning disabilities and they discuss the fate of medicalization in the 1990s with the changes in medicine and continued restrictions on social services. Peter Conrad is Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University. Joseph W. Schneider is Professor of Sociology at Drake University.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[It] should become a standard text in the study of deviance definitions an the starting point for the resolution of such problems as the definition and causes of medicalization and its interrelationship with other trends in social control."
—Contemporary Sociology

"Deviance and Medicalization is excellent...a worthwhile book for colleagues as well as for students."
—Qualitative Sociology

"An excellent text for sociology of medicine, social problems and deviance courses...a particularly apt choice in social science courses in medical schools."
—Social Science and Medicine

From the Publisher

A classic text on deviance is updated and reissued

Charles Horton Cooley Book Award, Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 263 pages
• Publisher: Temple University Press; 2 Expanded edition (October 15, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0877229996
• ISBN-13: 978-0877229995
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #604,013 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness, August 25, 2000

By 

carolyn - See all my reviews

This review is from: Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness (Paperback)

I read this book for a course on the sociology of deviance, andfound it a valuable resource. It traces the historical developement of deviant 'sicknesses' such as opiate addictions, mental illness, homosexuality, and attention deficit disorder. The book examines how these forms of deviance were understood historically, and how they came they came to be understood as forms of 'sickness.' Conrad and Schneider examine medical model of understanding deviance, which is currently standard, from a removed and critical perspective. In the forward (of my edition) Joseph Gusfield puts it thusly, "They treat the medical model as something strange, not as something that is 'taken for granted' as 'normal.' When a body a body of thought or phenomemon is taken as problematic, as something to be explained, its naturalness, its claim to 'reality,' is called to account." This book does an excellent job at calling the claims of the medical model into account. This book offers new perspectives on hot-topics, is well organized, and is extremely well-researched. I would warn people that it is dense reading, and some people may find it hard to get through. I would especially recommend this book to any who would form a stance on any of the following issues: drug use/abuse, mental illness, juvenile delinquency, homosexuality, and medicine as a means of social control.