Biomedicine as Culture

Regula Valérie Burri is an affiliated research fellow at Collegium Helveticum, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and University of Zurich. Her doctoral thesis, "Doing Images: Zur Praxis medizinischer Bilder" (forthcoming), explores the social and cultural implications of medical imaging. She has been a Swiss National Science Foundation research fellow and holds appointments with several Swiss universities. Her research interests focus on the relationship between science, technology, and society. She is the coauthor of "Social Studies of Scientific Images and Visualization," in Ed Hackett et al., The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (with Joseph Dumit; MIT Press). Joseph Dumit is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and the director of the program in Science and Technology Studies at University of California, Davis. His research interests are the anthropology of science, technology, and medicine; medical anthropology; and social studies. He is the author of Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity (Princeton University Press, 2004); and the coeditor of Cyborgs & Citadels: Anthropological Interventions in Emerging Sciences and Technologies (with Gary L. Downey; SAR Press, 1997), and Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots (with Robbie Davis-Floyd; Routledge, 1998). Dumit is the associate editor of the journal Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry.

Foreword. Introduction Regula Valérie Burri and Joseph Dumit I. Social and Cultural Studies of Biomedicine 1. Medicalizing Culture(s) or Culturalizing Medicine(s) Stefan Beck 2. Metaphors of Medicine and the Culture of Healing: Historical Perspectives Jakob Tanner 3. Medicine as Practice and Culture: The Analysis of Border Regimes and the Necessity of a Hermeneutics of Physical Bodies Gesa Lindemann II. Epistemic Practices and Material Culture(s) 4. The Future Is Now: Locating Biomarkers for Dementia Margaret Lock 5. Embodied Action, Enacted Bodies: The Example of Hypoglycaemia Annemarie Mol and John Law 6. Sociotechnical Anatomy Regula Valérie Burri 7. Risk and Safety in the Operating Theater: An Ethnographic Study of Socio-technical Practices Cornelius Schubert III. Biomedical Knowledge in Context 8. Genomic Susceptibility as an Emergent Form of Life? Genetic Testing, Identity, and the Remit of Medicine Nikolas Rose 9. Susceptible Individuals and Risky Rights: Dimensions of Genetic Responsibility Thomas Lemke 10. "Pop Genes": An Investigation of "the Gene" in Popular Parlance Barbara Duden and Silja Samerski 11. Genetics and Its Publics: Crafting Genetic Literacy and Identity in the Early Twenty-first Century Karen-Sue Taussig 12. Constructing the Digital Patient: Patient Organizations and the Development of Health Web Sites Nelly Oudshoorn. Epilogue: Indeterminate Lives, Demands, Relations: Emergent Bioscapes Joseph Dumit and Regula Valérie Burri