Constructivist Perspectives on Medical Work: Medical Practices and Science and Technology Studies

Casper, Monica J.; Berg, Marc

doi:10.1177/016224399502000401

Cited by 58 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…In bringing these concerns to the fore of science studies and medical anthropology, we build on previous attempts at articulating an engagement between these complementary pursuits. Whereas earlier forays into the overlapping terrain of medical anthropology and science studies have stressed the role of the social construction of medicine (Casper and Berg 1995) and the need for attention to the changing regimes of nature predicated on novel medical technological development (Casper and Koenig 1996), in this issue we highlight the imaginative horizons that provide foundations for both the emergence of technomedical commonsense and the mutations of human nature. In the following, we briefly overview each of the contributions in this special issue and then turn toward how these contributions help direct our attention to changing understandings of the human as well as how this complicates the place of biopolitics in medical anthropology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Extremities: Thresholds of Human Embodiment

Wolf-Meyer

Taussig

2010

Medical Anthropology

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Emergent conditions of life at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century create new opportunities and challenges for medical anthropology. The articles included in this special issue of Medical Anthropology suggest four areas that call out for more attention: the changing scientific and philosophical status of the human, including definitions of life and biology more broadly; the material consequences of anticipatory fictions; the expanding and intensifying forces invested in the production of bodies; and the emergent and historical conditions shaping expectations and experiences of bodies as they are managed and lived. In elaborating the significance of these issues, we provide an introduction to the articles included in this special issue and point to how the contributions to this collection offer models for approaching emergent forms of life.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Extremities: Thresholds of Human Embodiment

Wolf-Meyer

Taussig

2010

Medical Anthropology

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“…There have been recent calls for and signs of a rapprochement between the sociologies of medicine/healthcare and science/technology (Bartley 1990, Berg 1995, Casper and Berg 1995. The notion of a 'knowledge-based NHS' is of dual interest because it signals a bringing-together of scientific knowledge, which has been investigated in social studies of science, with healthcare practice, which has been investigated by sociologists of medicine and healthcare.…”

Section: Laboratories Experiments Technology Testing and Rhetoricmentioning

confidence: 99%

7. ‘Strange bedfellows’ in the laboratory of the NHS? An analysis of the new science of health technology assessment in the United Kingdom

Faulkner¹

1997

Sociology Health & Illness

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184 Alex Faulkner and McGuire 1992). A consequence of this is the formation of new strategic alliances between the various producers and consumers of research knowledge, in which research disciplines participate in the strategic action of healthcare policymaking agencies.The scope of the national health technology assessment movement brings into view many healthcare issues of interest to a sociological analysis. It raises issues to do with interests, values and inter-organisational relationships. It raises questions about the shaping of research agendas, healthcare policies, regulation of health technologies and, indeed, about the evolving patterns and methods of healthcare which we might have to call upon as health service users. It also raises issues germane to some of the prime concerns of the sociologies of medicine/healthcare and science/technology, including trust and contestability in medical authority, construction of health and healthcare risks, rhetorics of scientific projects and knowledge claims, relationships between the disciplines of medical and healthcare knowledge, and relationships between healthcare experiments, laboratories and technology tests.In this chapter I am concerned with only a limited set of the possible themes. The focus, therefore, is upon the use of rhetorical discourse in the construction and shaping of a 'need' for health technology assessment around new constellations of institutions and disciplines -'strange bedfellows' -which are negotiating agendas in healthcare knowledge. I locate this analysis by developing the notion of the NHS as a massive laboratory in and around which healthcare knowledge is produced. Implications for key themes in the sociological study of science/technology and healthhllness are discussed. I confine myself largely to considering some of the key activities and developments which are part of the formal national NHS HTA movement in the United Kingdom, with some reference to related activities in the Medical Research Council (MRC), rather than the wider range of healthcare research activity much of which might also follow a broadly health technology assessment model.Before moving on to consider the main themes of the chapter, I sketch briefly the state-co-ordinated formal structure which has been created for national HTA activity in the United Kingdom, followed by a description of the methods used in producing the analysis of HTA presented here. Formal organisation and function of national HTAHealth technology assessment is the only one of the many research programmes, set up under the new NHS Research and Development Directorate, to receive support through the formation of a permanent standing group to oversee it, the Standing Group on Health Technology (SGHT). The SGHT identifies priorities for assessment through nation-wide 0 Blackwell Publishers LtdEditorial Board 1997Health technology assessment in the United Kingdom 185

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“…One of the attractions of a sociology of scientific or medical knowledge was that it promised a more autonomous role for the sociologist: a move not just from sociology for medicinehcience to sociology of medicine/science from the margins but towards a sociology of the core of medicine/science (Bartley 1990: cf: Casper and Berg 1995). One might say that SSK has, itself, been a form of boundary work 'which occurs as people contend for, legitimate or challenge the cognitive authority of scienceand the credibility, prestige, power and material resources that attend such a privileged position' (Gieryn 1995: 405, cf: Strong 1979.…”

Section: Lay and Expert Understanding Of Science And Medicinementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, medical technologies and practice have recently figured prominently in key sociology of science journals (e.g. Berg 1995, Clarke and Montini 1993, Cussins 1996, Epstein 1995, Hartland 1996, Hirschauer 1991, Singleton and Michael 1993, Timmermans 1996 including in a special issue of Science, Technology and Human Values on medical practice (see Casper and Berg 1995). Edited collections and research monographs have recently been published on medical science and practice in general (e.g.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: the Sociology of Medical Science and Technology

Elston¹

1997

Sociology Health & Illness

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Constructivist Perspectives on Medical Work: Medical Practices and Science and Technology Studies

Cited by 58 publications

References 31 publications

Extremities: Thresholds of Human Embodiment

Extremities: Thresholds of Human Embodiment

7. ‘Strange bedfellows’ in the laboratory of the NHS? An analysis of the new science of health technology assessment in the United Kingdom

Introduction: the Sociology of Medical Science and Technology

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