The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice (Science and Cultural Theory)

196 Pages Indexed. There is light penciled (erasable) underlining and marginal notes on many of the first 58 pages. Beyond that is text pages that are near flawless. No other defects noted. This book is an extraordinary ethnography of an ordinary disease. Drawing on fieldwork in a Dutch university hospital, the author 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. From one moment, place, apparatus, specialty, or treatment, to the next, a slightly different atherosclerosis is being discussed, measured, observed, or stripped away. 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. This book juxtaposes two distinct texts. Alongside Mol's analysis of her ethnographic material interviews with doctors and patients and 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, This book will be important to those in medical anthropology, philosophy, and the social study of science, technology, and medicine. Contents in Six Chapters: Doing Disease, Different Atheroscleroses, Coordination, Distribution, Inclusion, and Doing Theory. Annemarie Mol is Socrates Professor of Political Theory at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. She has published widely in Dutch and English.