Overview
Where do our conventional understandings of health, illness, and the body stem from? What makes them authoritative? How are the boundaries set around these areas of life unsettled in the changing historical and political contexts of science, technology, and health care delivery? These questions are at the heart of Troubling Natural Categories, a collection of essays honouring the tradition of Margaret Lock, one of the preeminent medical anthropologists of our time. Throughout her career, Lock has investigated how medicine sets boundaries around what is deemed ""normal"" and ""natural,"" and how, in turn, these ideas shape our technical and moral understandings of life, sickness, and death. In this book, nine established medical anthropologists - all former students of Lock - critically engage with her work, offering ethnographic and historical analyses that problematize taken-for-granted constructs in health and medicine in a range of global settings. The essays elaborate cutting-edge themes within medical anthropology, including the often disturbing, inherently political nature of biomedicine and biotechnology, the medicalization of mental health processes, and the formation of uniquely ""local biologies"" through the convergence of bodily experience, scientific discourse, and new technologies of care. Troubling Natural Categories not only affirms Margaret Lock's place at the forefront of scholarship but, with these essays, carves out new intellectual directions in the medical social sciences. Contributors include Sean Brotherton, Vinh-Kim Nguyen, Junko Kitanaka, Stephanie Lloyd, Dominique Behague, and Annette Leibing.
Full Product Details
Author: Naomi Adelson ,
Leslie Butt ,
Karina Kielmann
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Imprint: McGill-Queen's University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.522kg
ISBN: 9780773541993
ISBN 10: 0773541993
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 07 November 2013
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
Reviews
"""The scholarship in Troubling Natural Categories is exemplary and will make a significant and lasting contribution to the field of medical anthropology."" Lisa M. Mitchell, Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria"
The scholarship in Troubling Natural Categories is exemplary and will make a significant and lasting contribution to the field of medical anthropology. Lisa M. Mitchell, Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria
The scholarship in Troubling Natural Categories is exemplary and will make a significant and lasting contribution to the field of medical anthropology. Lisa M. Mitchell, Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria
Author Information
Naomi Adelson is associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and associate dean, Research, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University. Leslie Butt is associate professor in the Department of Pacific and Asian Studies at the University of Victoria. Karina Kielmann is senior lecturer in the Institute for International Health and Development at Queen Margaret University.
