Compliance Rhetoric and the Impoverishment of Context

Abstract

The approach to health care advocated by compliance-gaining research asserts a vision of technology-mediated life that sees mostly advancements, improvements, and benefits brought about through biotechnology. A closer analysis offers a more problematic view of the body and biotechnology, one marked by disruption, contradiction, and transformation. Because of the growing importance of the self-regulation of illness and disability, the health communication and medical education fields have focused on compliance and compliance-gaining strategies as the means to empower patients in the recovery of lost health. This view of patient agency is limited by its exclusive focus on interpersonal, dyadic relationships and the presumption that agency can be transferred from one individual to another through an exchange of certified knowledge, skills, and technologies. Such a model of agency impoverishes what counts as context. This article analyzes three examples that capture elements of a world saturated with science and technology and finds that biotechnology offers a direct challenge to compliance because of its effects on context.