Foucault's Archaeology: Uses and Limitations.

Archaeology is a historical examination of medical or social scientific disciplines such as medicine itself, psychiatry, and psychology. In this paper, I suggest that medical sociologists interested in the relationship between the human sciences (such as medicine and psychiatry) and human beings should consider using the archaeological method as first laid out by Foucault. For Foucault, this relationship is one of discourse. It is the discourse primarily of medicine and psychiatry that shape humans. The archaeological method can not only reveal this discourse in certain historical eras, but it can show where the ruptures in discourse take place. Therefore, an understanding of particular discourses could benefit sociologists of medicine in their investigations of the processes of medicalization and social control, as well as how medicine and psychiatry construct illness and disorders. But in this paper, I also explain some of the limitations of the archaeological method. I suggest that used alone, this method is only a historical look at discourse. In other words, researchers would not be able to understand how and why certain discourses emerged while some were dismissed by only using archaeology. Other methods, such as Foucault's genealogy, would reveal the force relations that allow certain discourses to be privileged over others. Nevertheless, by utilizing archaeology, medical sociologists can unearth discourses about what is considered inside and outside of the norm as determined by medicine and psychiatry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]