Medicine as Culture : Illness, Disease and the Body in Western Societies

This book aims to provide a broad overview of the way medicine is experienced, perceived and socially constructed in western societies.

Deborah Lupton cogently links the different theoretical perspectives informing scholarship and research directed towards understanding the socio-cultural dimensions of medicine, illness and the body at the end of the 20th century. At a time of increasing disillusionment with scientific medicine and the mythology of the beneficent, god-like physician, there is also - paradoxically a growing dependence on biomedicine to provide the answers to social as well as medical problems.

This book illuminates why attitudes to medicine are characterized by such strong paradoxes, and why issues of disease, illness and the medical encounter are surrounded by controversy, conflict, power struggles and emotion. Key topics include: socio-theoretical perspectives of medicine, including feminist critiques sociocultural aspects of the illness experience the language and visual imagery of medicine, illness and disease the development of the patient and relations of power in the doctor-patient relationship the body in medicine. Integrating cultural studies, social history and contemporary theories of the body, "Medicine as Culture" aims to serve as a reading source for students and academics in the sociology of health and illness, the sociology of consumption and everyday life, medical anthropology, the history of medicine, health communication, womens studies, nursing studies and cultural studies.