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Pharmaceutical Cultures

Module description

‘There’s a pill for everything’: Pharmaceutical products are taken by millions of people in the UK and around the world. Pharmaceuticals such as birth control pills and antidepressants have come to assume an increasingly prominent place in everyday life. This module will provide an opportunity for you to think about how the individual act of taking a tablet is embedded within a series of global formations and processes. You will explore how medications taken by consumers in the UK are connected to global dynamics—for example, such drugs are often the products of transnational corporations, tested in clinical trials outsourced to developing countries; and marketed globally through promotional campaigns, internet discussion groups and online pharmacies. You will also consider the range of uses (and abuses) of pharmaceutical products outside the medical sphere; from recreational use to cognitive enhancement.

This module is suitable for anyone interested in the social science of medicine, health and illness. Its interdisciplinary approach will appeal to students in sociology, psychology, anthropology, medicine/health sciences, law and other social science disciplines.

Module aims - intentions of the module

You will be introduced to literature which shows how pharmaceuticals affect society and how pharmaceutical products are affected by social factors. You will make critical assessments of pharmaceutical marketing, unpacking notions such as ‘disease-mongering’ which create new markets for drug consumption. You will assess the relationship between pharmaceutical products and social control, in spheres such as mental health. You will examine how uses and experiences of medications vary across cultures and across different social groups; and how these differences link into wider international policy regulations of pharma products. As such, this module will develop your critical thinking in relation to the contemporary literature on the pharmaceuticalization of society, as well as stimulate your own intellectual interest in this area.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. demonstrate knowledge of, analyse and show some critical engagement with, a range of models and theories concerning pharmaceuticals and pharmaceuticalization of society
• 2. show some ability to relate these perspectives to empirical studies and public policy on pharmaceutical consumption, production and international regulation;

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. demonstrate in writing and orally some competence in using major theoretical perspectives and concepts in sociology and their application to social life ;
• 4. demonstrate in writing and orally an ability to analyse empirical sociological materials and some critically engagement with these involving complex reasoning;

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. develop an ability to engage in complex arguments verbally and in small groups;
• 6. demonstrate in writing an ability to analyse, begin to critically engage with, and report accurately on existing written material whilst articulating it within a structured and cogent argument.
• 7. demonstrate the ability to work independently, within a limited time frame, and without access to external sources, to complete a specified task.

Syllabus plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following themes:

1. Origins and expansion of pharmaceutical industries and markets.
2. The political economy of drug development, testing and regulation.
3. Pharmaceuticals and social change.
4. Pharmaceuticals, deviance, and social control.
5. Medicalisation of everyday life and the rise of ‘lifestyle drugs’.
6. Nonmedical uses of prescription drugs: Abuse/recreational use.
7. Nonmedical uses of prescription drugs: Enhancement.
8. Iatrogenic (medical) addiction to pharmaceuticals: why do doctors still prescribe? 

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

DeGrandpre, R. J. (2006). The cult of pharmacology: how America became the world's most troubled drug culture. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Dumit, J., & Greenslit, N. (eds) (2006). Pharmaceutical cultures. Special issue of Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 30(2).

Healy, D. (2002). The creation of psychopharmacology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lakoff, A. (2005). Pharmaceutical reason: knowledge and value in global psychiatry. Cambridge: CUP.

Martin, E. (2007). Bipolar expeditions: mania and depression in American culture. Princeton, N.J: Princeton UP.

Moncrieff, J. (2008). The myth of the chemical cure: a critique of psychiatric drug treatment. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Petryna, A., Lakoff, A., & Kleinman, A. (eds) (2006). Global pharmaceuticals: ethics, markets, practices. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

van der Geest, S., Whyte, S. R., & Hardon, A. (1996). The anthropology of pharmaceuticals: a biographical approach. Annual Review of Anthropology, 25(1), 153-178.

Williams, S. J., Gabe, J., & Davis, P. (eds) (2009). Pharmaceuticals and society: critical discourses and debates. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Key words search

Sociology, anthropology, pharmaceuticals, drugs