Problematized Patients – Intersectional Perspectives on Gender, Ethnicity, Class and Biomedicine

Abstract

Problematized patients – Intersectional perspectives on gender, ethnicity, class and biomedicine. This article presents an empirical analysis of the constitutional processes of becoming a patient in a Danish hospital setting by focusing on the intersections between biomedicine, gender, ethnicity, and class. The article uses the concept of intersectionality to emphasize institutional practices and how they shape knowledge, how inequalities are intersectional and contextual, and how the positioning of patients and thereby access to health care is differentiated by race, class, and gender. Three ‘problematized’ patients are analysed, showing how patients are subjectified by the hegemonic knowledge regimes of the hospital. This illustrates that gender, ethnicity, age and class play a constitutive role in the way patients are constructed as problematic within the clinic, thus supporting existing research in biomedicine as not neutral but negotiable. In addition, the arti- cle shows how the categories of gender, ethnicity, and class are put into play, silenced, and/or merged and mixed differently in each case.