Medicalization and secularization in selected English Canadian fiction

This paper presents an analysis of the role of medical and religious values in Canadian society during the past two centuries as described in Canadian book-length fiction. It has been argued that medical institutions are increasingly becoming powerful social control agencies. More and more of human behavior is seen as having a medical explanation, cause or cure. At the same time, religious institutions are believed to be diminishing in their social control abilities. Normality and abnormality tend now to be defined as medical conditions. What was once seen as sin may now be considered illness; and what once was grace or holiness, now may be viewed as health. An empirical examination of this theoretically conceived and seldom empirically examined trend is documented.