The In-Home Place of Medications: Perspectives of Domestication

Starting from the relevance of observing people’s behaviors with com- mon types of medicines, this contribution is intended to pinpoint some notes that revolve around in-home medication. What is proposed is a re ection on medicines as tangible, concrete devices that materialize the meaning of medication in the prosaic in-home dimension. While literature mainly intends the domestication of pharmaceutical consumption as either the pharmaceuticalization of daily life, or the domestication of usage, here we will use the term ‘domestication’ to mean the latter only. This perspective tries to highlight some traits of the use of medicines within the in-home spaces of everyday life, among ordinary things. It also looks at people’s real behaviors with medications to let habits, routines, and even rituals emerge. Against the background of these study interests, the consideration is posed that a substantial percentage of medication non-compliances, inconveniences, even errors and/or dif culties may be caused not only by lack of info-communicative aspects, but by the deficiencies of still ameliorable user-centered qualities of medicines themselves. These are deficiencies that may variably concern the usable properties of medicines as commodities (shape, size, proportions, annex co-products for intake or dosage) and the traits of that peculiar relation between users and medication use which may disorient the user, favoring or—conversely—hindering access or correct use, reducing but also potentially inducing possible errors. The framework within which in-home medication is approached here advocates the relevance of those disciplinary contributions stemming from studies in product design, product affordance, product-user cognition and interaction, accessibility, and usability design. Meant as a theoretical contribution, this reflection partly reviews some consolidated studies conducted in the anthropology of pharmaceuticals, while integrating inputs derived from person-centered care literature.