Incarnation and the dynamics of medical promises: DHEA as a fountain of youth hormone

Abstract

For more than a decade, the sociology of hope and expectations has gained growing influence in the social studies of health, medicine, and healthcare. This literature has stressed the role of representations of the future-through images, metaphors, theories, or visions-in the medical sector and analyzed the translation of these discursive contents into social practices and organizations. This article builds on these results and intends to explore a dimension that has received less attention: the incarnation of medical promises. Looking at the evolving case of a particular molecule, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)-which has been promoted from the mid-1990s onwards as a "fountain of youth" pill-, we emphasize that testimonies by and portrayals of those who are undergoing a treatment with uncertain risks and benefits, and representations of their bodies in the media, can play a key role in the performativity of a medical promise. We analyze this incarnation as a specific "form of veridiction" and stress its normative dimension. This leads us to underline how evidence-based medicine and experiential knowledge-which are often analyzed as two opposite sources of information-can intricate and give rise to the same incarnation dynamics.

Introduction

“…Each vegan is in effect the embodiment of the movement she/he promotes, a movement that cannot be defended with a body that is too puny or feeble. It seems indeed that this incarnation, in the sense used by Hauray and Dalgalarrondo [2018], constitutes one of the political aspects of self-optimization.…”

“…The issue of technologies of the self emerges as a site of friction between a normative space (and its technologies of domination) and the possibilities of resistance and emancipation. Because they are processual, these technologies of the self make it possible to discover and adopt different styles, optimalities that challenge, and which by their very existence reveal, in incarnate form, the possibility of a different life, with all that this implies politically [Hauray and Dalgalarrondo, 2018]. One of the tasks of the social sciences is to identify and understand the individual situations in which the incorporation of the social operates.…”

Hopes and fears regarding care robots: Content analysis of newspapers in East Asia and Western Europe, 2001–2020

“…The "promise" of social robots described in the media and scientific literature includes effective therapy, companionship and social facilitation in cognitive training and physiological therapy (52). The incarnation of this promise (49), through numerous representations of rejuvenated and vibrant older people interacting with robots, further strengthens the promising features of social robots. Even when critical voices are raised relating to ethical issues (protection of privacy) or social (dehumanization, robotization of social relations), this does not destroy the promise completely.…”

“…For several decades, a growing body of literature in social sciences has analyzed how healthcare policies and practices are framed by visions of the future, and has underlined the performative nature of these visions in a modernity marked by the coproduction of science, technology, and society ( 45 , 46 ). Different conceptualizations of these anticipations have been proposed: hope ( 13 ), expectations ( 47 , 48 ), promise ( 14 , 49 ) or “sociotechnical imaginaries” defined as “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology” ( 50 ).…”