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Biotechnology, Political Rationality and Discourses on Health Risk

University of Toronto, Canadaa.robertson{at}utoronto.ca

Using the results of a study to investigate women’s accounts of risks for breast cancer as a case study, this article examines the phenomenological, social and political implications of prevailing discourses on risk. The study is situated within the critical social science literature that argues that ‘risk’ has become one of the defining cultural characteristics of western society. As in other areas of life, the notion of risk has become central to discourses related to individual health; that is, ‘risk’ has become a common construct around which health in western society is described, organized and practised, both personally and professionally. This article argues that women’s health experiences, and the discourses on risk that shape those experiences, are produced within the same ideological context within which particular diagnostic/screening technologies are developed and deployed. Using governmentality as a framework, it is argued that current discourses on risk both make possible and are made possible by particular diagnostic/screening technologies. These discourses on risk also both reflect and reproduce notions of the ‘entrepreneurial subject’ and are, thus, consistent with a prevailing neo-liberal political rationality. The article concludes with a discussion of some of the questions for further research which are raised by this analysis.

Key Words: biotechnology • governmentality • risk • women’s health

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