Living and Working with the New Medical Technologies: Intersections of Inquiry

by Edited by Margaret Lock , Allan Young , Alberto Cambrosio

• ISBN13: 9780521655682
• ISBN10: 0521655684
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-07-31
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This stimulating collection of essays is the product of face-to-face dialogues among anthropologists, sociologists, and philosopher-historians, all of whom focus their attention on the newly created biomedical technologies and their application in practice. Drawing on ethnographic and historical case studies, the authors show how biomedical technologies are produced through the agencies of tools and techniques, scientists and doctors, funding bodies, patients, clients, and the public. Despite shared concerns, these essays reveal that the authors have achieved no consensus about the objectives of their research, and the deep epistemological divides clearly remain - making for provocative reading.

Table of Contents

List of contributors	ix
Introduction	1	(18)
Part I Epochal transitions? Biomedicine and the transformation of socionature
Beyond nature and culture: modes of reasoning in the age of molecular biology and medicine	19	(12)
Hans-Jorg Rheinberger
Epochs, presents, events	31	(18)
Paul Rabinow
Part II Laboratories and clinics: the material cultures of biomedicine
Trustworthy knowledge and desperate patients: clinical tests for new drugs from cancer to AIDS	49	(33)
Ilana Lowy
Pathology and the clinic: an ethnographic presentation of two atheroscleroses	82	(21)
Annemarie Mol
``Real compared to what?'': Diagnosing leukemias and lymphomas	103	(32)
Peter Keating
Alberto Cambrosio
History, hystery and psychiatric styles of reasoning	135	(30)
Allan Young
Part III Technologies and bodies: the extended networks of biomedicine
Screening the body: the pap smear and the mammogram	165	(19)
Patricia A. Kaufert
Extra chromosomes and blue tulips: medico-familial interpretations	184	(25)
Rayna Rapp
When explanations rest: ``good-enough'' brain science and the new socio-medical disorders	209	(24)
Joseph Dumit
On dying twice: culture, technology and the determination of death	233	(30)
Margaret Lock
The practice of organ transplants: networks, documents, translations	263	(25)
Veena Das
Index	288