مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - Medical Discourse and Power: The Media and the Diet-Thinness-Health Relationship Surrounding Body Control

Abstract :

Changes in social structure and cultural values also reflect perceptions on the appearence of the body. The most important indicator of this situation is to impose new physical forms by means of various mediums in the consumerist society. Medicine and media offer various discipline strategies regarding how to be nourished, how to stay in shape and how to be healthy. Strategies offered by specialists and via medical power are being applied by individuals; these strategies also turn the medicine into an integral part of the consumption culture and thus bring about medicalization of daily life. This study aims to focus on the medical discourses concerning bodily forms on media. For that purpose, the columns of Osman Müftüoğlu and Ender Saraç who write regularly on the health column of the newpapers named Hürriyet, Posta and Radikal, and Serap Güzel who also occasionally writes on Radikal analysed by using qualitative content analyse. The issues of diverse discipline strategies imposed on the body through medical knowledge, the aims of these strategies and, the relationship between thinness – health-diet is sought to be clarified within these columns.