The relationship between the medicalization of social life and the control and shaping process of the body: Sleeve gastrectomy

Although modern scientific knowledge dealing with the body through medical technologies makes human life extending and easier; on the other hand, it has caused it to be accepted as the basic reference of social life for this reason. That kind of reference of medical knowledge has caused to the control and arrangement of everyday life within the frame of medical knowledge and experts. The fact that medicine works directly on the human body has caused the human body to be the largest area of controlling and shaping. This situation, which is called medicalization in the literature, is the reality of modern societies. This encompassing control of the medical power over the body determines many facts, from how the bodies are, how they look and are formed, to how they are fed. In the study, the relationship between the medicalization of social life and the control and shaping processes of the body is examined through sleeve gastrectomy. Online in-depth interviews were conducted with 20 participants who had sleeve gastrectomy and 2 physicians determined by the snowball sampling method. The results of the study reveal that the overweight bodies, which are considered uncontrolled, are disciplined and controlled with sleeve gastrectomy, and that most of the participants decided to have sleeve gastrectomy because they faced many difficulties in their daily lives due to their overweight and were helpless to lose weight.