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

by Margaret Lock (Editor), Allan Young (Editor), Alberto Cambrosio (Editor)

Overview

This stimulating collection of essays, a product of a dialogue among anthropologists, sociologists, and philosopher-historians, focuses on the newly created biomedical technologies and their practical applications. 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, and the public. Despite shared concerns, the authors achieve no consensus about their research objectives, and deep epistemological divides clearly remain, making for provocative reading.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521655682
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/31/2000
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology , #8
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	308
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.71(d)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction Alberto Cambrosio, Allan Young and Margaret Lock; Part I. Epochal Transitions? Biomedicine and the Transformation of Socionature: 2. Beyond nature and culture: modes of reasoning in the age of molecular biology and medicine Hans-Jorg Rheinberger; 3. Epochs, presents, events Paul Rabinow; Part II. Laboratories and Clinics: The Material Culture of Biomedicine: 4. Trustworthy knowledge and desperate patients: clinical tests for new drugs from cancer to AIDS Ilana Lowy; 5. Pathology and the clinic: an ethnographic presentation of two atheroscleroses Annemarie Mol; 6. 'Real compared to what?': diagnosing leukemias and lymphomas Peter Keating and Alberto Cambrosio; 7. History, hystery, and psychiatric styles of reasoning Allan Young; Part III. Technologies and Bodies: The Extended Networks of Biomedicine: 8. Screening the body: the Pap smear and the mammogram Patricia A. Kaufert; 9. Extra chromosomes and blue tulips: medico-familial interpretations Rayna Rapp; 10. When explanations rest: 'good-enough' brain science and the new sociomedical disorders Joseph Dumit; 11. On dying twice: culture, technology, and the determination of death Margaret Lock; 12. The practice of organ transplants: networks, documents, translations Veena Das.

Editorial Reviews

'This volume's strength lies in its multiple understandings of scientific objects and practices. … It is still, a decade after publication, relevant to continuing concerns, reflecting the continuing lack of agreement in epistemology, but approaches that nonetheless, articulate new knowledge.' The Journal of Biosocial Science

From the Publisher