The Organic Body in the Health System: Between Biocapital and Biovulnerability

Health is a complex social system composed of different subsystems, such as the internal nature of the human subject, the environment and non-human species, the social system including health institutions, and the relationships of the social self (Ardigò, 1997; Costa, 2023). The interconnections between these subsystems are not adequately considered in the biomedical model (Clarke et al. 2003), which the massive development of biotechnology and a molecular gaze on the body (Rose, 2007) has helped to legitimise as the dominant framework for understanding health and human life. The biomedical model tends to neglect the bidirectional influence between the organic body-mind system and society. Within this framework, vulnerability - which is an existential characteristic of every subject endowed with a deciduous and woundable body (Turner, 2006) - is reduced to a question of disease, cure and prevention. This prevents subjects from perceiving their bodies as inherently vulnerable and from seeing their organic dimension as an available resource to be managed throughout their lives.

Through a theoretical reflection inspired by critical social theories on biocapital, biomedicalisation and biopolitics, the paper aims to discuss 'biovulnerability' as a condition embedded in the biological body in an ongoing dialogue with the health system and its subsystems. Two case studies on the placenta and breast milk will be presented: they are emblematic of how biovulnerability can be reduced simultaneously through the perspective of biocapital (i.e. as economic exploitation and technological modification of the body) and in a more holistic way (i.e. as a practice of caring for one's own body, understood as a system/health).

The aim of this paper is to provide a new research perspective that considers biovulnerability as the essential glue between the human body and health in a systemic perspective, highlighting the limitations of the current approach shaped by biomedicine 2.0.