Abstract

This work discusses illness and citizenship, with a particular focus on medical anthropology. From this perspective, illness presents the subject a double-bind, as it could be at the same time a mechanism of inclusion and exclusion (exclusion through isolation and stigma and inclusion through medicalization). Thus, I suggest illness sets the grounds for a form of citizenship that is “biologically” based, transforming sufferers into citizens. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Bolivia, I argue that the experience of tuberculosis implies a transformation of sufferers into citizens who are integrated to the state through the engagement with a mandatory pharmaceutical treatment.