Hygienism and social medicine: powers of normalization and means of subjecting the popular classes

Abstract

Based on data from the history of medicine in Spain, we would like to show that M. Foucault was right when he said that the discourses and practices of medicine are one of the key points from which the powers of normalization arise in our society. Specifically, we focus our analysis on some of the most representative texts of hygienism and social medicine during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to show the enormous influence of these discourses and practices of medicine on changes in lifestyle of the popular classes that occurred during this period. Undoubtedly, the medicine —its discourses, its institutions, its practices, its prescriptions, its recommendations— has played a leading role in the design of the processes of subjectivation by means of which we recognise ourselves and construct ourselves as subjects possessing a specific type of identity.