A Feminist Approach to Medical Screening - Normativity as Research Object and as Practice
Description: Medical screening is an expanding part of healthcare. More diseases are screened for and larger parts of the population are being screened. Because of this, we need to understand what screening does – and screening does much more than just find disease.This research programme starts from the assumption that screening helps do things: helps form how their users should understand and care for their bodies and bodily futures. It helps shape who qualifies as healthy, at risk or as a candidate for further medical treatment – as when partners are offered genetic screening, before they have tried to conceive, seeking to identify carrier status for 70 diseases. Still, little research has examined the opportunities and challenges of and within screening practices from the screened subjects´ perspectives or how technological, socio-political, economic and ethical dimensions intertwine when screening technology is developed and used.The programme’s aim is to investigate norms and normativity in medical screening. It breaks new theoretical ground, contributes with knowledge about screening that rarely is part of policy discussions, and takes its result to new audiences through collaborative work with norm critical designers.The programme cross-pollinates feminist phenomenology and feminist science studies, combining the analysis of lived bodily experiences, normality and deviance (the contribution from feminist phenomenology) with a norm critical take on the co-construction of technological, socio-political, economic and ethical dimensions when technology is developed and used (the contribution from feminist science studies).It examines the co-emergence of subjects, agency and normativity in three screening programmes: in screening of mental health among teenagers, preconception screening of adults before they try to get pregnant, and screening for dementia.It engages with societal impact issues beyond the writing of texts.The programme consists of 5 projects. Project 1 works with and through differences in conceptualisations when feminist phenomenological and feminist science studies of embodied, expressed and enacted normativity are combined, and develops a combined theoretical framework.Project 2 examines the screening of mental health among teenagers in Sweden, project 3 targets preconception screening of adults before they try to get pregnant in the Netherlands, and project 4 investigates screening for dementia in Sweden, asking: How are conceptions of health, disease, normality and risk expressed or enacted in these screenings? How are norms about bodies and about care for one’s future bodily self expressed or enacted? How are these conceptions and norms made sense of, transformed or resisted by screened subjects? These questions are answered through the analyses of interviews with screened subjects, staff, technicians/screening designers; participant observations, and policy documents. The analyses of the screening cases contribute to the theoretical development in project 1, and enable the research team to continuously test its analytic usefulness. Project 5 targets communication: it engages in collaborative work with norm critical designers and transforms the programme’s results into norm critical screening artefacts for public display in Stockholm. This allows our results – and the framework that informs the research questions – to be heard and seen by the public and policy-makers. The programme builds on the PI’s past and present research, which combines empirical and philosophical work in the analysis of normativity in medicine and brings feminist theory and phenomenology into bioethics. Taking such work one step further, and noting the shared concern with normativity within medical practices and the role of corporeality/materiality for agency between feminist phenomenology and feminist science studies and the rareness of dialogue between them, the programme brings out rarely discussed dimensions of screening.
Funder: Vetenskapsrådet
Amount: SEK 12,000,000
Funding type: fellowship
Funder scheme: Grant for positions or stipends
Start date: 2017-01-01
End date: 2022-12-31
Investigator: Kristin Zeiler
Institution: Linköping University
Funded outputs count: 8
Funder award ID: 2016-00784
OpenAlex ID: G907216692