4S+'09+Abstract+-+Classifications+of+Health+&+Biosociality+-+Submitted

Classifying the healthy self and unhealthy self: The Biosociality of medical tourists. By Gareth Edel

Considering the discursive construction of travel for healthcare and the American discourse of responsibility for self discipline and “wellness” care, there exists a double classification for patients as both “healthy” and “unhealthy” in current discourse. The connection between classification and knowledge system has been the subject of careful study in STS. Classification is often the manner in which pre-structuring ontological beliefs and tendency are most adamantly defended, thus the schism caused when classification is problematized is often productive ground for study. Reconstruction of classification of expertise and scientific knowledge is the basis of the boundary work around AIDS activist participation in science (Epstein), Collins’ work on scientific controversies, and conflicts over definition of life (Locke) as being examples of moments of such productive schism. Through examination of published interviews, advertisements, web based community sites and individual blogs/web-pages this paper documents such a schism in the construction of healthy-patients and medical-tourists in the practices of international travel for healthcare and the community legitimizing it. These communities form low-tech definitions of subjects defined by/or in spite of biology in manners similar and dissimilar to the concepts of “biosociality” (Petrayna; Rabinow, Rapp) in response to broader classifications of health. While different classes of “health” (healthy, poor health, and unhealthy) exist in the contemporary American construction of “health” they are mobilized and reconfigured in light of this new community practice and a once marginal practice becomes big business. This paper centrally examines the process by which the practice and identity of medical-tourists has been classified as both deviant and beneficial.