Competing realities, uncertain diagnoses of infectious disease: Mass self-testing for COVID-19 and liminal bio-citizenship.

Diagnoses of infectious diseases are being transformed as mass self-testing using rapid antigen tests (RATs) is increasingly integrated into public health. Widely used during the COVID-19 pandemic, RATs are claimed to have many advantages over 'gold-standard' polymerase chain reaction tests, especially their ease of use and production of quick results. Yet, while laboratory studies indicate the value of RATs in detecting the SARS-CoV-2 virus antigen, uncertainty surrounds their deployment and ultimate effectiveness in stemming infections. This article applies the analytic lens of biological citizenship (or bio-citizenship) to explore Australia's experience of implementing a RAT-based mass self-testing strategy to manage COVID-19. Drawing on Annemarie Mol's (1999, The Sociological Review, 47(1), 74-89) concept of ontological politics and analysing government statements, scientific articles and news media reporting published during a critical juncture of the strategy's implementation, we explore the kind of bio-citizenship implied by this strategy. Our analysis suggests the emergence of what we call liminal bio-citizenship, whereby citizens are made responsible for self-managing infection risk without the diagnostic certitude this demands. We discuss how the different realities of mass self-testing interact to reinforce this liminal citizenship and consider the implications for the sociology of diagnosis.

Medicalização e governo da vida e subjetividades: o mercado da saúde / Medicalization and government of life and subjectivities: health market / La medicalizacion y de gobierno de la vida y subjetividades: mercado de salud

Este artigo apresenta uma análise da literatura a respeito de medicalização, a partir da biopolítica no neoliberalismo. A construção do mercado da saúde coloca em cena um conjunto de tecnologias de governo de condutas que forja subjetividades saudáveis e controladas pelas prescrições de saúde e segurança. Os efeitos dessas práticas medicalizantes atravessam e fabricam corpos e populações, instrumentalizados pela gerência de risco e perigo, pela prevenção e controle do futuro, em nome da vida e da saúde, prolongadas ao extremo. Nesse aspecto, o objeto desse artigo é problematizar por meio de uma abordagem histórica, baseada em Foucault, a emergência do biocapital e da bioeconomia, como táticas de normalização e normatização das condutas pela biocidadania; e no âmbito das leis que reivindicam o direito à saúde, como estratégia. (AU)

This paper presents a literature review about medicalization, from biopolitics, in neoliberalism. The construction of the healthcare market puts into play a set of government technology of pipelines, which forge healthy subjectivities and controlled by health and safety requirements. The effects of these medicalized practices cross and manufacture bodies and populations, exploited by the risk management and risk, the prevention and control of the future, in the name of life and health, extended to the extreme. In this respect, the object of this article is to discuss through a historical approach, based on Foucault the emergence of biocapital and the bioeconomy as standardization tactics and regulation of pipelines by biocitizenship as strategy, under the law to claim the right to health. (AU)

Este artículo presenta una revisión de la literatura sobre la medicalización, desde la biopolítica, en el neoliberalismo. La construcción del mercado de la salud pone en juego un conjunto de tecnología de gobierno de las tuberías, lo que forjar subjetividades sanos y controlada por los requisitos de salud y seguridad. Los efectos de estas prácticas medicalizadas se cruzan y se fabrican cuerpos y poblaciones, explotados por la gestión del riesgo y el riesgo, la prevención y el control del futuro, en nombre de la vida y la salud, extendidos hasta el extremo. En este sentido, el objeto de este artículo es discutir a través de un enfoque histórico, basado en la aparición de Foucault biocapital y la bioeconomía como la táctica y la regulación de las tuberías por biocitizenship como estrategia de normalización, en virtud de la ley para reclamar el derecho a la salud. (AU)

Love, Lust, and Loss in the Early Age of AIDS: The Discourse in the Body Politic From 1981 to 1987.

This article explores the idea that the AIDS epidemic constituted a defining moment for the Canadian gay rights movement and illuminates the intricate power dynamics of the development of a community identity. Using grounded theory inductive and deductive content analysis, and interviews with activists from the Body Politic magazine, this article considers notions of health "from above" and "from below" by examining relations between the community and government and their confrontation with medicalization and the medical profession. I also examine how the magazine reported and negotiated issues related to the community's self-policing and "self-managed oppression" through efforts to promote safer sex and risk reduction.

The politics of health mobilization in the United States: The promise and pitfalls of "disease constituencies".

A critical review of recent literature on U.S. social movements concerned with matters of health and illness prompts reconsideration of the prevailing conception of such movements as necessarily isolated and particularistic. With a focus on disease-constituency-based mobilization-presently the most potent model of efficacious activism to be found in the domain of health and illness in the United States-I argue that such activism may tend in two directions: a specific response to an imminent disease threat, and a bridging of collective action frames and identities that can lead to connections across differences and broader mobilization. Case studies have demonstrated how patient activism has affected the management of illness, attitudes and practices of health professionals, research practices, processes of innovation, state policies, and corporate behavior. Through close analysis of patient group mobilization and its distinctive orientation toward knowledge and expertise, I argue that patient groups in practice may connect with or influence one another or a range of other forms of mobilization in relation to health, and I examine the "linkage mechanisms"-spillover, coalition, and frame amplification-by which this can occur. Rather than imagine a stark opposition between particularistic, single-issue health politics, on the one hand, and universalistic efforts to transform the meaning and practice of health and health care in the United States, on the other, I propose closer attention to the potentially Janus-faced character of many health movement organizations and the ways in which they may look either inward or outward.

Disordered Eating/Eating Disorder: Hidden Perils of the Nation's Fight against Fat.

The nation's fight against fat has not reduced obesity, but it has had other worrying effects. Mental health researchers have raised the possibility that the intense pressures to lose weight have heightened the risks of developing eating disorders, especially among the young. Medical anthropology can help connect the dots between the war on fat and disordered eating, identifying specific mechanisms, pathways, and contextual forces that may lie beyond the scope of biomedical and psychiatric research. This article develops a biocitizenship approach that focuses on the pathologization of heaviness, the necessity of having a thin, fit body to belonging to the category of worthy citizen, and the work of pervasive fat-talk in defining who can belong. Ethnographic narratives from California illuminate the dynamics in individual lives, while lending powerful support to the idea that the battle against fat is worsening disordered eating and eating disorders among vulnerable young people.