Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract

The presentation analyses the emergence of a new normativity on sleep based on a biologized model that considers itself biosocial. To this end, we draw on radio and television reports broadcast in Uruguay between 2014 and 2024, in which experts comment on sleep problems and ways of addressing them.

Paper long abstract

Academic and media discourse on good or bad sleep and healthy sleeping habits is commonly dominated by sleep medicine and chronobiology. In countries as diverse as the United States and Argentina, public policy decisions such as high school start times have been modified based on chronobiology recommendations demonstrating how biologized notions of sleep are influencing concrete policies that regulate how people sleep.

In this presentation, we will discuss the emergence of a new normativity on sleep based on a biologized model of sleep that considers itself biosocial. To this end, we will draw on radio and television reports broadcast in Uruguay between 2014 and 2024, in which doctors and academics comment on sleep problems and ways of addressing them. In these reports Uruguayans are portrayed as nocturnal creatures who eat and go to bed much later than other populations in the region and these habits are considered to have a negative impact on how much sleep they get each night. According to experts, this situation is exacerbated among children and adolescents, whose school performance declines as a result.

We argue that this characterisation incorporates social and cultural dimensions only to the extent that they reinforce the biomedical view of sleep and allow habits to be censored in pursuit of biological optimization. We also discuss how this biosocial view of sleep becomes a new form of habit regulation, inciting us to monitor our own and others' sleep, and even calling for public policies to be created.