Flexible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture-from the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS - Hardcover

Martin, Emily

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807046264 ISBN 13: 9780807046265

Publisher: Beacon Pr, 1994

Synopsis

Argues that changing attitudes towards sickness and immunity are reflected in other views, such as the trend towards temporary employees who can be let go when no longer needed

About this title

About the Author

Emily Martin is Mary Garrett Professor of Anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University.

Reviews

The traditional image of the immune system as an army defending the body against foreign invaders is gradually being supplanted, asserts Martin, who teaches anthropology at Johns Hopkins. She sees a new model of immunity emerging among conventional scientists, holistic practitioners and the public, according to which the immune system is thought of as a "field" whose dysfunctions contribute to allergies, cancer, heart disease and AIDS. But a corollary of this emergent view of the body as a complex, constantly changing system, she maintains, is the notion that some people are more "flexible" than others who are less adaptable. "Flexibility" is coming to be valued more highly than the individual, in Martin's analysis, and this underlies a disturbing new Social Darwinism. For this wide-ranging, sometimes provocative study, Martin interviewed members of a polio survivors' support group, joined ACT UP demonstrations, was a participant-observer in an immunology research lab and a volunteer "buddy" in a residence for the HIV-infected. Illustrations.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An anthropologist's erudite report on how our ideas about the body (and society) are undergoing a dramatic shift. Martin (Anthropology/Johns Hopkins; The Woman in the Body, 1987) and her research assistants conducted over 200 interviews with people in diverse Baltimore neighborhoods to learn how ordinary people understand the immune system and how their understandings have shaped their thinking about health, illness, and fitness. By also working in an immunology research lab, as a volunteer buddy to HIV-positive individuals, and as an AIDS activist, she was able to study the attitudes of people with impaired immune systems and of scientists researching immunology. Through analysis of the popular culture of the 1940s and 1950s, she shows how the body was once thought of as a fortress with its defenses primarily at its surface. The emerging view, she finds, sees the body as defended internally by a complex immune system able to respond swiftly to changes. This adaptability, or flexibility, is seen as a highly desirable attribute not only for the immune system but for individuals and organizations, and those lacking it are perceived as being less fit for survival- -biologically or economically. Martin comments on the dangers of such a view and speaks for the contrary values of stability and security. Portions of her material have been previously published in professional journals and presented in university seminars and lectures. Here she is attempting to write for the general reader, lacing the text with cartoons, drawings, and magazine ads and quoting liberally from interviews. Nevertheless, newcomers to the theory of complex systems, or chaos theory, will find this a challenge. A provocative study, albeit one that occasionally reads like a PhD thesis, of how scientific ideas operate in the real world. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Basing her intriguing book on the responses of both nonscientists and scientists (who vary greatly socially, politically, and in income-levels) to a survey concerned with knowledge of the immune system and also on radio and TV reporting and magazine and book literature, Martin shows how views of the immune system have changed during the course of a half century. Her presentation becomes especially provocative as it turns to the current scene. For just as businesses now seek more employee flexibility so that they--the businesses--can adjust quickly to changing conditions, her respondents expect more flexibility from the human immune system. Martin points out the disturbing implications of the belief that individuals can train their immune systems like businesses train employees and that groups of persons can be ranked in society by the quality of their immune systems. Enhanced by illustrations from many sources, her effort will make an excellent focus for study and discussion groups. William Beatty

Edition details

• Publisher: Beacon Pr
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807046264
• ISBN 13: 9780807046265
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320