Biomedicine as Culture: Instrumental Practices, Technoscientific Knowledge, and New Modes of Life

by Burri, Regula Valerie; Dumit, Josepch

• ISBN13: 9780415957984
• ISBN10: 0415957982
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-06-15
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This volume offers interdisciplinary perspectives on contemporary biomedicine as a cultural practice. The collection of essays 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.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Social and cultural studies of biomedicine	p. 15
Medicalizing culture(s) or culturalizing medicine(s)	p. 17
Metaphors of medicine and the culture of healing: Historical perspectives	p. 35
Medicine as practice and culture: The analysis of border regimes and the necessity of a hermeneutics of physical bodies	p. 47
Epistemic practices and material culture(s)	p. 59
The future is now: Locating biomarkers for dementia	p. 61
Embodied action, enacted bodies: The example of hypoglycaemia	p. 87
Sociotechnical anatomy: Technology, space, and body in the MRI unit	p. 109
Risk and safety in the operating theater: An ethnographic study of sociotechnical practices	p. 123
Biomedical knowledge in context	p. 139
Genomic susceptibility as an emergent form of life? Genetic testing, identity, and the remit of medicine	p. 141
Susceptible individuals and risky rights: Dimensions of genetic responsibility	p. 151
"Pop genes": An investigation of "the gene" in popular parlance	p. 167
Genetics and its publics: Crafting genetic literacy and identity in the early twenty-first century	p. 191
Constructing the digital patient: Patient organizations and the development of health websites	p. 205
Epilogue: Indeterminate lives, demands, relations: Emergent bioscapes	p. 223
Contributors	p. 229
Index	p. 235
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