Product Description

"The Body Multiple" is an extraordinary ethnography of an ordinary disease. Drawing on fieldwork in a Dutch university hospital, Annemarie Mol looks at the day-to-day diagnosis and treatment of atherosclerosis. A patient information leaflet might describe atherosclerosis as the gradual obstruction of the arteries, but in hospital practice this one medical condition appears to be many other things as well. From one moment, place, apparatus, specialty, or treatment to the next, a slightly different 'atherosclerosis' is being discussed, measured, observed, or stripped away. Mol demonstrates that this multiplicity does not imply fragmentation. Instead, the disease is made to cohere through a range of tactics including transporting forms and files, making images, holding case conferences, and conducting doctor-patient conversations."The Body Multiple" juxtaposes two distinct texts. Alongside Mol's analysis of her ethnographic material - interviews with doctors and patients; observations of medical examinations, consultations, and operations - runs a parallel text in which she reflects on the relevant literature. Mol draws on medical anthropology, sociology, feminist theory, philosophy, and science and technology studies to reframe such issues as the disease-illness distinction, subject-object relations, boundaries, difference, situatedness, and ontology. In dialogue with one another, Mol's two texts meditate on the multiplicity of reality-in-practice. Presenting philosophical reflections on the body and medical practice through vivid storytelling, "The Body Multiple" will be important to those in medical anthropology, philosophy, and the social study of science, technology, and medicine.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #105332 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

Review
"[R]emarkable... [Mol's] new book is brilliant, wonderfully polyglot, insightful, humorous, and bold, almost but not quite to the point of outrageous... [H]er refreshing new book is an original 'object'-a creation that deserves a prominent place as a cornerstone in the canon of medical epistemology."--Jacalyn Duffin, Journal of History of Medicine and Allied Sciences "The Body Multiple is my nominee for defining medical sociology in the 21st century... [E]ngaging... Awards committees should take notice of this major contribution."--Arthur W. Frank, American Journal of Sociology Also reviewed in Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. Listed in CHE, Journal of the History of Idea, JHPPL, and Journal of the History of Ideas. Reviewed in Dutch in Krisis.

Customer Reviews

An amazing achievement
The adjective "extraordinary" in the synopsis summarizes the study, and the book based on it, very well. At a first glance, Annemarie Mol did what many other researchers try to do. She depicted a local practice, and drew some abstract conclusions from her study. But the book is extraordinary because 1) she managed to make the practice she describes interesting not only to readers interested in health care; 2) she managed to make a local practice globally appealing (as we learn from the book, an US reviewer prompted her to highlight the "Dutchness" of her study, making it even more interesting for a non-Dutch reader; 3) she used her theory to emplot her report from the field, so that it reads as a fascinating story - not because there are great heroes or dramatic events in it, but because it is so well plotted. She also dared to attempt another experiment - to present a literature review and disciplinary reflections known as "methodology" in a form of a voice, telling all this in parallel to main events. Many have tried this kind of experiment in social sciences, and many has failed miserably! So here we have a text, written by a philosopher, which reads like a story; a text that informs the reader about one of the most crucial phenomena in the contemporary world, medical intervention; a text that never ceases to be concrete and never ceases to produce insightful abstractions. An amazing achievement, indeed.

Informative and Clear
This book is at the cutting edge of the social sciences whilst being incredibly easy to read. A scholar reading this book should find the narritive familiar if they are constantly involved in a thought process that seeks to balance out philisopical demands with that of creating a representative research project. Overall it offers an insightful view on medical procedures and medical conditions, breaking them down in elemental form and assemblages of 'performativity', challenging conventional assumptions of the impartiality of medicine.