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Agency through medicalization: Ghanaian children navigating illness, medicine and adult resistance

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  • Santah, Colette
  • Bröer, Christian

Abstract

Medicalization in the Global North assumes that bottom-up medicalization is driven by increasing consumer power, risk avoidance among professionals, or emancipation. Building on ethnographic work of the first author, this article aimed to explore the existence and conditions of a different and novel mechanism and found children manifesting agency through self-medicalization. We look at how Ghanaian children pragmatically deal with everyday health concerns and argue children are agents of medicalization and medicalization enables agency in children.

Suggested Citation

  • Santah, Colette & Bröer, Christian, 2022. "Agency through medicalization: Ghanaian children navigating illness, medicine and adult resistance," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 315(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:315:y:2022:i:c:s0277953622008103
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115504
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    References listed on IDEAS

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