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Over a decade after medical sociologist Phil Brown called for a sociology of diagnosis, Putting a Name to It provides the first book-length, comprehensive framework for this emerging subdiscipline of medical sociology.
Diagnosis is central to medicine. It creates social order, explains illness, identifies treatments, and predicts outcomes. Using concepts of medical sociology, Annemarie Goldstein Jutel sheds light on current knowledge about the components of diagnosis to outline how a sociology of diagnosis would function. She situates it within the broader discipline, lays out the directions it should explore, and discusses how the classification of illness and framing of diagnosis relate to social status and order. Jutel explains why this matters not just to doctor-patient relationships but also to the entire medical system. As a result, she argues, the sociological realm of diagnosis encompasses not only the ongoing controversy surrounding revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in psychiatry but also hot-button issues such as genetic screening and pharmaceutical industry disease mongering.
Both a challenge and a call to arms, Putting a Name to It is a lucid, persuasive argument for formalizing, professionalizing, and advancing longstanding practice. Jutel’s innovative, open approach and engaging arguments will find support among medical sociologists and practitioners and across much of the medical system.
The Johns Hopkins University Press
A well-documented, carefully argued manuscript. Jutel's prose was easy to understand, and her book would be quite accessible to the interested lay reader.
— Greta McGough
An important resource for health care professionals, especially those in the social sciences.
— Sally Brown
— Lisa Sanders
This thought-provoking book will help all health professionals to become more aware of their communications with patients and families.
This book's greatest achievement is its engaging style and clear location of scholarly analysis in a clinical context.
The book is well written and [surprisingly] pleasurable to read.
With this engaging and fascinating text, [Jutel] has presented a challenge which medical sociology can, and should, take on board.
The issues explored in Putting a Name to It, and the questions it raises, are of tremendous importance today... Jutel's book—and the development of the field—can help us find a language and context to discuss critical and emerging issues like these.
Reading this book was a helpful experience.
This book's greatest achievement is its engaging style and clear location of scholarly analysis in a clinical context. Jutel never lets the reader forget why diagnosis matters, and she is skilled at making the invisible visible as she expores the myriad ways in which the mysterious process of classifying and naming illness informs the provision of healthcare. This is a book that will have a wide academic appeal.
Overview
Over a decade after medical sociologist Phil Brown called for a sociology of diagnosis, Putting a Name to It provides the first book-length, comprehensive framework for this emerging subdiscipline of medical sociology.
Diagnosis is central to medicine. It creates social order, explains illness, identifies treatments, and predicts outcomes. Using concepts of medical sociology, Annemarie Goldstein Jutel sheds light on current knowledge about the components of diagnosis to outline ...