Medical schismogenics: compliance and 'culture' in Caribbean biomedicine

As biomedicine turns increasingly toward chronic diseases, compliance of adherente with pharmaceutical regimens has become a major focus. This article explores the specters created by the diagnostics of non-compliance, focusing on asthma in the eastern Caribbean country of Barbados. I argue that the rubric of compliance in biomedicine today medicalizes 'culture' as a gendered irrational use of medications; and such a focus has created a counterdiscourse among families and medical practitioners that posits a biomedicine obsessed with 'compliance.' I suggest that these reciprocal reactions comprise a medical schismogenics that exceed the diagnostics of noncompliance, whether biomedical or anthropological. [Keywords: compliance, schismogenesis, pharmaceutical, Barbados]
In medicine today, talk of compliance to pharmaceutical prescriptions is everywhere. As biomedical researchers and practitioners increasingly turn toward chronic diseases--asthma, heart disease, cancer, diabetes--the daily taking of medications has [...]