Childbirth is an essential part of reproductive politics which have largely focused on expanding choice for women’s reproductive lives. Childbirth in the west has been medicalised, which means that authoritative knowledge was moved into the hands of the patriarchal medical establishment through displacement of traditional midwives, casting women as ‘hysterical’ and inherently sick and seeing birth as a medical event and technology as the appropriate way to deal with birth and the body. In the United States, with surveillance and risk factors, each woman in labour is considered in medical danger and treated accordingly, curtailing women’s ability to make decisions about their bodies and birth. The alternative or natural childbirth movement has resisted this form of medicalised birth, but within the movement, pressure can also be found on women to perform femininity and achieve a perfect birth. A focus on choice is therefore limited without also considering structural factors. / Graduate

This thesis examines the development of the Edinburgh Royal Maternity Hospital in the context of medical care in Edinburgh during the period 1844-1914. It is based primarily on casebooks of the hospital and, in particular, on in-depth micro-studies of all of the hospital's Indoor and Outdoor cases in four discrete years, at approximately 20-year intervals. The central argument of the thesis is that Over the period 1844- 1914, professionals and patients at the hospital came to understand birth as a medical rather than a social event, and that this had repercussions for both groups as well as the institution itself. Chapter 1 places the thesis in the context of other secondary uork on the development of maternity hospitals and care, and examines the use of casebooks as primary sources. Chapter 2 considers the hospital and its staff in relation to the city and the Edinburgh medical community in particular. Chapter 3 examines the patients who attended. It argues that, in the nineteenth century, their perception of the hospital was as a place of social shelter. However, by 1912 a greater number attended for otherwise unaffordable medical care at birth. Chapter 4 examines the medical treatment given to patients. It argues that there was increasing acceptance of medicalisation by patients in the period studied, and increasing confidence in giving such treatment by the professionals involved. Chapter 5 discusses the staff and male and female trainees at the hospital. It suggests that, prior to the introduction of national requirements, the provision of training was driven by commercial concerns, and therefore varied throughout the period studied, particularly in the amount of practical experience offered. The relationship between the different grades of staff and the treatment they offered, described in the chapter, suggests increasing stratification in the roles of doctors and nurses at delivery and during the puerperium. The increase in nursing care following the birth indicates the creation of a professional role that among the poor had previously been undertaken by family members. The role played by increasing anxiety over infection following the introduction of strict antiseptic measures is discussed. The thesis concludes that in Edinburgh the medicalisation of childbirth among the poor was well-advanced by 1912, and suggests that this was a result of increasing patient acceptance combined with the increasing professionalisation of care.

This thesis will deal what is the impact on the life of a young woman with breast cancer disease who is take care of at least one child. More specifically, it will focus on the area of motherhood, partnerships and financial security at a time during treatment. The author will try to uncover how the effects of the disease affecting these areas were perceived by women. Keywords Disease, breast cancer, social support, motherhood, partnership, financial security.

To be a fat woman is to experience a prolonged, personal battle with the body. The battle is enacted in a social context which is the site of remarkable consensus about the personal culpability of fat people for their bodily largeness; for women in particular the sanctions are especially powerful. In this research nine large women have engaged in a prolonged dialogue about the experience of being 'obese'. In the course of a feminist research endeavour, with a researcher who is similarly positioned, they have both contributed to and gained from a project which illuminates the experience of largeness alongside a critical examination of the discourses which shape body size.This dissertation critiques a dominant medical discourse which ignores conflicting research and supports a narrow view of health by simplistically linking increased body weight with poor health outcomes. Such is the hegemonic power of medicine that an examination of both nursing and popular literature in the area of study, reveals wide-spread acceptance of the notion that to be thin is to be healthy and virtuous, and to be fat is to be unhealthy and morally deficient. For nursing, the unquestioning obedience to medical teaching, raises serious questions about nursing's autonomy and separateness from medicine. Nurses have perpetuated an unhelpful and reductionist approach to their care of large women, in direct contradiction to nursing's supposed allegiance to a holistic approach to health care. Current strictures on women's body size and continued support for reduction dieting leave large women with the choice between two binary opposites; to diet or not to diet. Either choice has consequences which are traumatic and not health promoting. The experience of largeness emerges as a socially constructed disability in which many women are denied the opportunity to be fully healthy.

To be a fat woman is to experience a prolonged, personal battle with the body. The battle is enacted in a social context which is the site of remarkable consensus about the personal culpability of fat people for their bodily largeness; for women in particular the sanctions are especially powerful. In this research nine large women have engaged in a prolonged dialogue about the experience of being 'obese'. In the course of a feminist research endeavour, with a researcher who is similarly positioned, they have both contributed to and gained from a project which illuminates the experience of largeness alongside a critical examination of the discourses which shape body size.This dissertation critiques a dominant medical discourse which ignores conflicting research and supports a narrow view of health by simplistically linking increased body weight with poor health outcomes. Such is the hegemonic power of medicine that an examination of both nursing and popular literature in the area of study, reveals wide-spread acceptance of the notion that to be thin is to be healthy and virtuous, and to be fat is to be unhealthy and morally deficient. For nursing, the unquestioning obedience to medical teaching, raises serious questions about nursing's autonomy and separateness from medicine. Nurses have perpetuated an unhelpful and reductionist approach to their care of large women, in direct contradiction to nursing's supposed allegiance to a holistic approach to health care. Current strictures on women's body size and continued support for reduction dieting leave large women with the choice between two binary opposites; to diet or not to diet. Either choice has consequences which are traumatic and not health promoting. The experience of largeness emerges as a socially constructed disability in which many women are denied the opportunity to be fully healthy.

This thesis explores the political and ethical response to the development of new medical technology in the 1980s through the governmental commission Utredningen om det ofödda barnet [the commission regarding the unborn child] and its final report Den gravida kvinnan och fostret – två individer: om fosterdiagnostik, om sena aborter: slutbetänkande av Utredningen om det ofödda barnet [The Pregnant Woman and the Foetus – two individuals. On prenatal diagnosis. On late abortions: final report on the commission on the unborn child]. This governmental commission, alongside the late 1980s more broadly, have been described as a conservative backlash and reaction to the feminist movement and the fight for women’s right to their bodies. However, a close reading of the report shows that though it draws controversial connections between abortion, prenatal diagnosis and ability variations, the governmental commission advocated an extension of the law, not a limitation of rights. Through a biopolitical perspective this thesis shows how power was distributed between the state, the society and the individual. Unlike previous research’s polarisation, this thesis’s take on medicalisation shows that medicalisation is not something that necessarily opposes moralisation, but that they can be used to legitimate each other. Finally it discusses what this means for our understanding of the political climate in Sweden during the 1980s and how this changes our perception of what makes a human being.

La loi du 11 février 2005 « pour l’égalité des droits et des chances, la participation et la citoyenneté des personnes handicapées » a provoqué une profonde mutation du système éducatif et entrainé un nouveau partage entre le monde médico-social et l’Éducation nationale avec la mise en place d’un travail de partenariat. Un changement paradigmatique majeur s’est opéré avec l’émergence du concept d’inclusion. L’école devenue « inclusive » s’efforce désormais de répondre aux besoins éducatifs particuliers de chaque élève en adaptant la norme scolaire. Les dispositifs collectifs d’inclusion sont des leviers privilégiés de la scolarisation d’élèves en situation de handicap qu’ils accompagnent suite à une notification de la Maison Départementale des Personnes Handicapées.L’objectif central de cette thèse consiste à interroger, plus de 10 ans après la loi, les processus à l’œuvre lors de l’orientation d’élèves vers des ULIS école. Certains élèves sont orientés en ULIS école sans pour autant présenter de handicap avéré. Ils sont, pour la plupart, issus d’un environnement marqué par une précarité sociale assorti d’une problématique familiale. Ces orientations qui inscrivent l’enfant sur le registre du handicap se font sous couvert d’un étiquetage médico-psychologique, les difficultés scolaires étant assimilées à de la déficience légère. Elles sont rendues possibles par un élargissement de la catégorie du handicap, par des critères d’orientation de plus en plus larges et par l’accroissement actuel des réponses médico-psychologiques face à l’échec scolaire. Il semblerait que les dispositifs ULIS continuent à assurer une fonction de régulation sociale, le recours à l’enseignement spécialisé restant socialement différencié. Dans le contexte actuel de médicalisation des difficultés scolaires, sont orientés en ULIS école des élèves qui mettent le système ordinaire en difficulté et pour lesquels, il ne semble avoir d’autre réponse que l’inscription dans le champ du handicap. / The 11th of February 2005 law « for disabled persons rights and opportunities equality, participation and civic rights » brought about a deep educational system change and provoked a new sharing between the medico-social system and the Éducation Nationale with the positioning of a partnership. A main changing paradigm has occured with the inclusion concept emergence. Schooling today inclusive is trying to answer pupils’ special educational needs by adjusting school standards. Group inclusion systems are privileged levers to help disabled pupils at school following the Maison Départementale des Personnes Handicapées notifications.This thesis main goal, more than ten years after the law for the disabled persons, consists in examining the process at work when pupils are guided towards a primary school ULIS (Unité Localisée d’Inclusion Scolaire). A certain number of pupils have received educational counselling towards primary school ULIS without any proven disability. They have, mostly, originated from environments with social and family problems. These notifications labelling children as disabled have been done on a medico-psychological basis, the children’s schooling difficulties labelled as mild disability. Those have occured because of a widening of the disability category, wider and vaguer educational counselling criterions and today’s increasing medico-psychological solutions to school underperforming. ULIS systems would seem to carry on ensuring a social regulating function, the recourse to special needs education being socially differentiated. Today’s context of medicalizing school underperformance is leading to guide towards primary school ULIS pupils, putting the common system in a difficult position, and, for whom there seems to be no other solution than labelling them as disabled.

Syftet med föreliggande uppsatsarbete är att beskriva erfarenheter av psykofarmaka och psykoterapi. Studien är kvalitativ till sin karaktär och utgår från intervjuer med fyra psykoterapeuter och en läkare. Uppsatsen tar utgångspunkt i ett fenomenologiskt perspektiv. Intervjuerna har analyserats så förutsättningslöst som möjligt utifrån EPP-metoden. Arbetet har haft sin grund utifrån fem övergripande frågeställningar; Hur uppfattar vi lidandets mening i relation till psykofarmaka? Påverkas en individs möjlighet att känna och tänka om denne regelbundet brukar psykofarmaka? Kan den som lider förvänta sig vägledning i de olika enskilda, respektive kombinationsbehandlingar som finns? Minskar det egna lidandet genom att sätta ord på sin ångest i psykoterapi? Hur resonerar läkemedelsindustrin i frågan kring individens psykiska lidande? Dessa frågeställningar har vilat mot en filosofisk fond som ställer frågan: Är medikaliseringen ett sätt att medicinera mot livet självt, att göra samhällets tillkorta-kommanden till ett individuellt problem? Resultaten presenteras i fem synopsis som visar på att; lidande kan ses som kraft till förändring. Antidepressiva läkemedel har en tendens att döva tankar och känslor. Patientens egen vilja är viktig. Mediciner tenderar att bli till substitut för mötet med människor och att relationen till läkemedelföretagen är problematiskt för behandlare då den också är en vinstmaskin. / The purpose of the study is to describe experiences gained from the use of psychotropic drugs and/or psychotherapy. The study is qualitative in nature and based on interviews with four psychotherapists and physicians. The study takes as its basis a phenomenological perspective. The interviews were analyzed as unprejudiced as possible using the EPP method. The work was based on five overreaching issues; How do we perceive suffering, meaning in relation to psychotropic drugs? Is an individual's ability to feel and think affected by regular use of psychotropic drugs? Can an individual who suffers expect guidance via individual treatment or via available combined treatments? Is an individuals suffering reduced by setting words to the anxiety in psychotherapy? How does the pharmaceutical industry discuss the issue of individual mental suffering? These issues have been tested against a philosophical background that asks the question: Is medicalisation a way of medicating against life itself, a way of making society's shortcomings the individual`s problem? The results are presented in five synopsis which say that suffering can be seen as force for change. Antidepressants have a tendency to numb thoughts and feelings. The patient's own will is important. Medication tends to be a substitute for meeting people and the relationship to pharmaceutical companies problematic for therapists as the industry is also a profit machine.

O presente trabalho se dedica a realizar uma incursão na história do pensamento criminológico a fim de contribuir para um mapeamento das justificativas do surgimento de certas normas penais, algumas ainda em vigor, e o mapeamento das razões da edificação de muitas instituições jurídicas e administrativas, algumas ainda em funcionamento. A análise tradicional da biografia da Criminologia costuma, todavia, omitir certas ideias que deveriam ser integradas ao percurso da sua vertente científica. Vários são os autores que apontam para a origem da trajetória cientificista criminológica na Europa do fim do século XIX. No entanto, quando se aprofunda na identificação das raízes das referências positivistas na implicação Medicina-Pessoa-Sociedade da era moderna e sua influência na seara criminológica, percebesse que uma tímida Criminologia já estava nascendo no início do século XIX com os estudos sobre a fisiologia cerebral. Em meio a um processo político amplo de fortalecimento do Estado e da burguesia, dá-se a formação de um aparato médico-jurídico, pelo qual se demonstra a tentativa de reconhecimento da autoridade médica para além dos limites legítimos da atividade. Preocupa-se, portanto, em chamar a atenção para o movimento de medicalização do criminoso por uma leitura histórica do impacto do cientificismo cerebral na esfera criminal. O material desenvolvido pela Frenologia e, depois, pela Antropologia Criminal, é emblemático dessa onda cientificista do século XIX, na qual as pesquisas cerebrais imprimem a visão sobre a etiologia do crime a partir de seus marcadores biológicos. Mais particularmente, atenta-se para a recepção das teorias de Franz Joseph Gall e de Cesare Lombroso sobre o cérebro (do) criminoso na criminologia do século XIX, através da discussão da noção de livre arbítrio, do debate sobre retribuição versus tratamento, bem como das propostas de medidas preventivas em caso de tendências à violência e das políticas públicas voltadas para o cerceamento de direitos em nome de uma suposta defesa social. / The current work aims at performing an analysis of the history of criminological reasoning in order to contribute to an overview that justifies the appearance of certain criminal rules, some of them still ongoing, together with the mapping of the reasons for the building of many juridical and administrative institutions, some of which are still functioning. Traditional analysis of the genesis of Criminology is accustomed to, nevertheless, omitting certain ideas, which ought to be integrated into the current scientific scope. There are several authors who point to the origin of the scientificist trajectory in Europe, at the end of the 19th- century. However, when we go deeper into the identification as to the roots of the positivist references in the implication Medicine-Person-Society of modern times and its influence on the criminological domain, we realize that a timid Criminology was about to be born at the beginning of the 19th -century, following the studies on brain physiology. Amidst the vast political process of the strengthening of the State and the bourgeoisie, a medical-juridical apparatus is originated, through which the attempt of recognition of the medical authority is demonstrated, beyond the legitimate limits of the activity. It is concerned, therefore, in drawing attention to the criminals medicalisation movement by means of a historical reading of the impact of brain scientificism in the criminal sphere. The material developed by Phrenology and, afterwards, by Criminal Anthropology, is a significant sign of such a scientificist trend in the 19th-century, in which brain researchers put forward their vision on the etiology of the crime from its biologic markers. More particularly, there is an emphasis on the reception of the theories of Franz Joseph Gall and Cesare Lombroso about the criminal brain in 19th-century Criminology, through discussion of the notion of free will, the debate on retribution versus treatment, as well as the proposition of preventive measures in cases of tendencies to violence and public policies towards controlling rights in the name of a socalled social defense.

O presente trabalho se dedica a realizar uma incursão na história do pensamento criminológico a fim de contribuir para um mapeamento das justificativas do surgimento de certas normas penais, algumas ainda em vigor, e o mapeamento das razões da edificação de muitas instituições jurídicas e administrativas, algumas ainda em funcionamento. A análise tradicional da biografia da Criminologia costuma, todavia, omitir certas ideias que deveriam ser integradas ao percurso da sua vertente científica. Vários são os autores que apontam para a origem da trajetória cientificista criminológica na Europa do fim do século XIX. No entanto, quando se aprofunda na identificação das raízes das referências positivistas na implicação Medicina-Pessoa-Sociedade da era moderna e sua influência na seara criminológica, percebesse que uma tímida Criminologia já estava nascendo no início do século XIX com os estudos sobre a fisiologia cerebral. Em meio a um processo político amplo de fortalecimento do Estado e da burguesia, dá-se a formação de um aparato médico-jurídico, pelo qual se demonstra a tentativa de reconhecimento da autoridade médica para além dos limites legítimos da atividade. Preocupa-se, portanto, em chamar a atenção para o movimento de medicalização do criminoso por uma leitura histórica do impacto do cientificismo cerebral na esfera criminal. O material desenvolvido pela Frenologia e, depois, pela Antropologia Criminal, é emblemático dessa onda cientificista do século XIX, na qual as pesquisas cerebrais imprimem a visão sobre a etiologia do crime a partir de seus marcadores biológicos. Mais particularmente, atenta-se para a recepção das teorias de Franz Joseph Gall e de Cesare Lombroso sobre o cérebro (do) criminoso na criminologia do século XIX, através da discussão da noção de livre arbítrio, do debate sobre retribuição versus tratamento, bem como das propostas de medidas preventivas em caso de tendências à violência e das políticas públicas voltadas para o cerceamento de direitos em nome de uma suposta defesa social. / The current work aims at performing an analysis of the history of criminological reasoning in order to contribute to an overview that justifies the appearance of certain criminal rules, some of them still ongoing, together with the mapping of the reasons for the building of many juridical and administrative institutions, some of which are still functioning. Traditional analysis of the genesis of Criminology is accustomed to, nevertheless, omitting certain ideas, which ought to be integrated into the current scientific scope. There are several authors who point to the origin of the scientificist trajectory in Europe, at the end of the 19th- century. However, when we go deeper into the identification as to the roots of the positivist references in the implication Medicine-Person-Society of modern times and its influence on the criminological domain, we realize that a timid Criminology was about to be born at the beginning of the 19th -century, following the studies on brain physiology. Amidst the vast political process of the strengthening of the State and the bourgeoisie, a medical-juridical apparatus is originated, through which the attempt of recognition of the medical authority is demonstrated, beyond the legitimate limits of the activity. It is concerned, therefore, in drawing attention to the criminals medicalisation movement by means of a historical reading of the impact of brain scientificism in the criminal sphere. The material developed by Phrenology and, afterwards, by Criminal Anthropology, is a significant sign of such a scientificist trend in the 19th-century, in which brain researchers put forward their vision on the etiology of the crime from its biologic markers. More particularly, there is an emphasis on the reception of the theories of Franz Joseph Gall and Cesare Lombroso about the criminal brain in 19th-century Criminology, through discussion of the notion of free will, the debate on retribution versus treatment, as well as the proposition of preventive measures in cases of tendencies to violence and public policies towards controlling rights in the name of a socalled social defense.