The Hegemony of Medicalization Discourse in Iranian Medical Sociology: A Discursive Analysis of University of Tehran Theses

Universities play a decisive role in the production of knowledge, the framing of health-related issues, and the stabilization of regimes of truth. In Iran, medical sociology occupies an interdisciplinary position in which it can either critically interrogate dominant biomedical discourse or contribute to its reproduction. Despite the quantitative expansion of graduate theses in this field, no systematic study has examined the dominance of medicalization discourse within its academic knowledge production. This study aims to analyze the dominance and discursive mechanisms of medicalization in medical sociology theses at the University of Tehran. The central research question asks how these theses frame issues related to health, the body, and behavior, and how such framings contribute to the reproduction of medicalization discourse and configurations of power/knowledge. Adopting a qualitative approach, the study combines systematic content analysis with Foucauldian discourse analysis. The research population consisted of all master’s and doctoral sociology theses related to health at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran, between 2001 and 2023. Based on thematic criteria and after initial screening, 77 theses were selected, and their abstracts were analyzed as condensed representations of the full texts. The findings indicate that the dominant thematic categories include the medical profession, mental health, the body, and care, while secondary themes involve health inequalities, surveillance, health behaviors, treatment compliance, and empowerment. Discursive analysis identified four central mechanisms: professional authority, biopower, normalization, and neoliberal responsibilization. The prevalence of clinical language, risk-based logic, population monitoring, and the individualization of responsibility for health suggests that a substantial portion of knowledge production in this field operates under the dominance of medicalization discourse and participates in reproducing biomedical power/knowledge regimes. At the same time, limited traces of resistance discourse and structural critiques of inequality are observable, indicating potential openings for strengthening critical orientations in medical sociology education and research.