Medical Technology and the Social: How Medical Technology is Impacting Social relations, Institutions, and Beliefs about what is Normal explores the intersection of society and medical technology to examine how medical technology impacts our day-to-day lives. The contributors examine a variety of technologies and their impact on the social world, from older technologies such as the use of fax machines in hospitals to cutting-edge technologies such as Bluetooth-enabled smart pills. Underlying each chapter is a consideration of what is "normal", investigating such themes as power and social control, diffusion of technology, eco-crip theory, the changing role of medical expertise, the embodiment of the fetus in utero, the history of prosthetics, and how technology has reformed conceptions of a "normal" body.
Kathryn Burrows is assistant professor of sociology at Madonna University and an independent scholar.
Table of Contents Introduction Kathryn Burrows Part I: Technology Adoption, Diffusion, and Obduracy 1. Deconstructing Adoption and Use of Medical Technology: The Case of Two Imaging Technologies in India Ankita Mukherjee and India Chakravarthi 2. Infrastructural Embeddedness and the Persistence of Fax in Australian Healthcare Contexts Rowan Wilken and Jenny Kennedy Part II: Envisioning the Body through Technology 3. The Fetal Scan Project Anna Gonzalez Suero 4. The Alterlife of Disabled Fetal Imaginaries: Understanding Irradiation and Disability after New Reproductive Technologies Misria Shaik Ali 5. Menstrual Futures: Medical Technologies' Impact on Beliefs about "Normal" Bleeding Amber Nicole Brooks 6. The Emporia of Aristotle: What Prosthetics Taught Us About the Human Body Alan Hawk Part III: Pharmaceutical interventions to the Social World 7. Technologies of Repair: Naloxone, Opioid Overdose Prevention, and the Social in the U.S. Southwest Danielle Kabella 8 Abilify MyCite and the Social Control of Digital Pills Kathryn Burrows About the Contributors
In this book, Kate Burrows and her collaborators provide cutting-edge accounts regarding major developments in medical technologies ranging from cat scans to new reproductive techniques, to developments in pharmacology. It is essential reading for anyone interested in how sociocultural factors influence changes in medical technologies. -- Allan V. Horwitz, Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, Rutgers University
