Social contexts, strategies of power and strategies of resistance on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Abstract

This project's object is the process of medicalization that exercises itself through Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) on children. We intend to investigate the strategies by which that process exercises itself in different Brazilian social contexts. For that, we question the tendency of standardizing ADHD diagnosis and treatment and the notions of normality and pathology of child behavior built in those contexts. Moreover, we consider Foucault's warning (1977; 1982; 2006a) that strategies of power take for granted strategies of resistance to investigate the possibilities of resistance created by subjects against the submission that results from that medicalization.