According to Anthony Giddens:
“The biomedical model of health [builds on] the belief that disease can be defined in objective terms and that the sick body can be restored to health through scientifically based medical treatment. The biomedical model of health emerged alongside modern societies. It was linked to the rise of demographics – the study of the size, composition and dynamics of human populations – and the growing interest of states in promoting public health.” (Sociology, 4th ed)
In
the process of building the modern urban environment, sources of existential
anxiety such as deterioration and death, chronic sickness, madness, and
eroticism got sequestered from day-to-day routines (Modernity and
Self-Identity). These realities remind
us that we are inseparable from nature, its rhythms, and its contingencies.
In
the process of building the surveilled environments of hospitals, asylums, and
carceral complexes, these realities became secluded from regular
activities. The face-to-face presencing
of dying and death, the very smell of it, and the laughing and singing of the
insane have become unusual phenomena to upper-class and middle-class persons
especially in urban locales.
“In
pre-modern societies chronic sickness was part of many people’s lives and
contact with death was a more or less commonplace feature of everyone’s
experience (Modernity and Self-Identity).
These critical yet familiar features of pre-modern life were often
enveloped in traditional practices and rituals that offered meaning and
solace. Deep immersion in tradition
helped people to appreciate the continuous intermingling of being and non-being
in the world.
