1st Edition
Biomedicine as Culture Instrumental Practices, Technoscientific Knowledge, and New Modes of Life
This volume offers interdisciplinary perspectives on contemporary biomedicine as a cultural practice. It brings together leading scholars from cultural anthropology, sociology, history, and science studies to conduct a critical dialogue on the culture(s) of biomedical practice, discussing its epistemic, material, and social implications. The essays look at the ways new biomedical knowledge is constructed within hospitals and academic settings and at how this knowledge changes perceptions, material arrangements, and social relations, not only within clinics and scientific communities, but especially once it is diffused into a broader cultural context.
Preface
1) Introduction
Regula Valerie Burri, Collegium Helveticum, ETH and University of Zurich
Joseph Dumit, Department of Anthropology and Program in Science and Technology Studies,
UC Davis
Section I: Social and Cultural Studies of Biomedicine
2) Medicalizing Culture(s) or Culturalizing Medicine(s)
Stefan Beck, Department of European Ethnology, Humboldt-University Berlin
3) Metaphors of Medicine and the Culture of Healing: Historical Perspectives
Jakob Tanner, Department of History, University of Zurich
4) Medicine as Practice and Culture: the Analysis of Border Regimes and the Necessity of a
Hermeneutics of Physical Bodies
Gesa Lindemann, Department of Sociology, Technical University Berlin
Section II: Epistemic Practices and Material Culture(s)
5) The Future is Now: Locating Biomarkers for Dementia
Margaret Lock, Departement of Social Studies of Medicine, McGill University
6) Embodied Action, Enacted Bodies: the Example of Hypoglycaemia
Annemarie Mol, Faculty of Behavioral Sciences, University of Twente
John Law, Centre for Science Studies and Department of Sociology, Lancaster University
7) Sociotechnical Anatomy
Regula Valerie Burri, Collegium Helveticum, ETH and University of Zurich
8) Risk and Safety in the Operating Theatre: an Ethnographic Study of Socio-technical Practices
Cornelius Schubert, Department of Sociology, Technical University Berlin
Section III: Biomedical Knowledge in Context
9) Genomic Susceptibility as an Emergent Form of Life? Genetic Testing, Identity, and the Remit of
Medicine
Nikolas Rose, Department of Sociology, London School of Economics and Social Science
10) Susceptible Individuals and Risky Rights: Dimensions of Genetic Responsibility
Thomas Lemke, Institut für Sozialforschung, Frankfurt/M.
11) "Pop-Genes": an Investigation of "the Gene" in Popular Parlance
Barbara Duden and Silja Samerski, Department of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Hannover
12) Genetics and its Publics: Crafting Genetic Literacy and Identity in the Early 21st Century
Karen-Sue Taussig, Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota
13) Constructing the Digital Patient: Patient Organizations and the Development of Health Web Sites
Nelly Oudshoorn, Centre for Studies of Science, Technology and Society, University of Twente
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Regula Valérie Burri is an affiliated research fellow at Collegium Helveticum, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and University of Zurich. Her doctoral thesis, "Doing Images: Zur Praxis medizinischer Bilder" (forthcoming), explores the social and cultural implications of medical imaging. She has been a Swiss National Science Foundation research fellow and holds appointments with several Swiss universities. Her research interests focus on the relationship between science, technology, and society. She is the coauthor of "Social Studies of Scientific Images and Visualization," in Ed Hackett et al., The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (with Joseph Dumit; MIT Press).
Joseph Dumit is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and the director of the program in Science and Technology Studies at University of California, Davis. His research interests are the anthropology of science, technology, and medicine; medical anthropology; and social studies. He is the author of Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity (Princeton University Press, 2004); and the coeditor of Cyborgs & Citadels: Anthropological Interventions in Emerging Sciences and Technologies (with Gary L. Downey; SAR Press, 1997), and Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots (with Robbie Davis-Floyd; Routledge, 1998). Dumit is the associate editor of the journal Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry.