Reifying the Body through the Medicalization of Violent Death

This article suggests that the violent deaths of American Indians are being medicalized. The biomedical classification of violent death (suicides, homicides, accidents) subverts the social elements of causality in favor of identifying individual culpability. It is here argued that the biomedical nosology known as the International Classification of Disease (ICD) has entered the everyday, commonsensical discourse of those who investigate these deaths (police, EMTs, medical examiners). After presenting a theoretical framework I offer four ethnographic vignettes to illustrate how death has been medicalized among the Tohono O'odham Indians of southern Arizona. These vignettes, though not statistically significant, reveal how cause is inscribed on the bodies of the deceased. In other words, the classification of violent death reifies the individual body at the expense of the social body. Five recommendations for further research and consideration are then offered

Criminology · Medicalization · Psychiatry · Sociology · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Gender Studies · Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse · Psychology · Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses

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