Patient-centred decision-making? Biocitizens between evidence-based medicine and self-determination

Nikolas Rose's work on contemporary biopower centres the 'biocitizen' as a subject governed through freedom and made individually responsible in matters of health. This article argues that a focus on its conditions of possibility will enable a better contextualisation of the biocitizen as merely one subject position among others. Using a Swedish policy document on the treatment of depression as an empirical example, the article calls for a more heterogeneous understanding of healthcare, torn for instance between ideals of evidence-based treatment and patients' self-determination, inviting further empirical and theoretical investigation of the active biocitizen and its limitations.