Curtin University Homepage
  • Library
  • Help
    • Admin

    espace - Curtin’s institutional repository

    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.
    View Item 
    • espace Home
    • espace
    • Curtin Research Publications
    • View Item
    • espace Home
    • espace
    • Curtin Research Publications
    • View Item

    Pills, pluralism, risk and citizenship: Theorising e-pharmacies

    Access Status
    Fulltext not available
    Authors
    Brijnath, Bianca
    Date
    2012
    Type
    Journal Article
    
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Citation
    Brijnath, B. 2012. Pills, pluralism, risk and citizenship: Theorising e-pharmacies. BioSocieties. 7 (3): pp. 294-307.
    Source Title
    BioSocieties
    DOI
    10.1057/biosoc.2012.11
    ISSN
    1745-8552
    School
    School of Occupational Therapy and Social Work
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/17252
    Collection
    • Curtin Research Publications
    Abstract

    This article uses the theoretical concepts of risk, imagination and pharmaceutical citizenship to understand the growing popularity of e-pharmacies and online health-seeking. I start with discussing how rapid social and economic forces such as globalisation, the rise of diasporic communities, increased use of technologies, changing notions of citizenship and risk, and the commodification of health have see the rise of e-pharmacies both licit and illegal. Then I explicate the links between the social imagination and pluralism; the relationship between e-pharmacies, risk and the state; and finally how the aim of achieving pharmaceutical citizenship prevails over national citizenship and the risks associated with using e-pharmacies. I conclude there are three ironies in this paradigm: (i) the common reasons for drug-purchasing among e-pharmacy consumers (associated as being technologised, high income earners) and drug consumers in low-income, poorly regulated societies; (ii) the irony of pluralism and hybridism-wherein drugs are marketed as exotic and unknown but embedded in scientific knowledge and credibility; and (iii) the irony of risk and the role of the state-wherein people prefer the unknown, that is, the risk of drugs bought online rather than the risks of the known, that is, the capacity of the state to actually and sufficiently care for its populace.

    Related items

    Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.

    • Medication incidents in a private hospital : frequency, type, causes and outcomes
      McKnight, David (2011)
      Background: Medication Safety has become a major health issue in Australia and internationally. Medication use is a part of most people lives with around seven in ten Australians and nine in ten older Australians having ...
    • Pharmacy study of natural health product adverse reactions (SONAR): a cross-sectional study using active surveillance in community pharmacies to detect adverse events associated with natural health products and assess causality
      Necyk, C.; Tsuyuki, R.; Boon, H.; Foster, B.; LeGatt, D.; Cembrowski, G.; Murty, M.; Barnes, J.; Charrois, Theresa; Arnason, J.; Ware, M.; Rosychuk, R.; Vohra, S. (2014)
      OBJECTIVES: To investigate the rates and causality of adverse event(s) (AE) associated with natural health product (NHP) use, prescription drug use and concurrent NHP-drug use through active surveillance in community ...
    • Sameness and difference: Metaphor and politics in the constitution of addiction, social exclusion and gender in Australian and Swedish drug policy
      Moore, David; Fraser, Suzanne; Törrönen, J.; Tinghög, M. (2015)
      Like any other discourse, drug policy is imagined and articulated through metaphors. In this article, we explore the metaphors and meanings at work in the current national drug policies of Australia and Sweden. Australia's ...
    Advanced search

    Browse

    Communities & CollectionsIssue DateAuthorTitleSubjectDocument TypeThis CollectionIssue DateAuthorTitleSubjectDocument Type

    My Account

    Admin

    Statistics

    Most Popular ItemsStatistics by CountryMost Popular Authors

    Follow Curtin

    • 
    • 
    • 
    • 
    • 

    CRICOS Provider Code: 00301JABN: 99 143 842 569TEQSA: PRV12158

    Copyright | Disclaimer | Privacy statement | Accessibility

    Curtin would like to pay respect to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members of our community by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which the Perth campus is located, the Whadjuk people of the Nyungar Nation; and on our Kalgoorlie campus, the Wongutha people of the North-Eastern Goldfields.