Pharmacological Microcontroversies and Civilizational Grammars Around ADHD in Chile

This article examines pharmacological microcontroversies (PMC) surrounding attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in Chile, based on a comparative, multisited ethnography in four educational contexts with differing socioeconomic and territorial profiles. Drawing on science and technology studies, microcontroversies studies, and Norbert Elias's sociology of interdependence, the study conceptualizes ADHD as a situational configuration in which diagnosis and treatment emerge from interwoven relations among children, caregivers, educators, and health professionals. Data were collected through focused ethnography, open interviews, discussion groups, and triangular groups and analyzed via emergent content and sociological discourse analysis. Two axes structure PMC: (i) desired effect-stillness versus performance, and (ii) normative model-external conduct versus internal capacities. Across sites, pharmaceuticals were embedded in distinct "civilizational grammars" linking bodily regulation, moral expectations, and educational aims: from medication as protection against criminality to a "concentration pill" enabling hidden potential. These grammars mediate acceptance, rejection, or ambivalence toward medication crossed by other vectors as class and gender. ADHD-related debates thus constitute territorially situated normative arrangements, revealing how local trajectories and interdependencies shape diagnoses and the production of children's interiority.