"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. 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.
"The Body Multiple" 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, "The Body Multiple" will be
important to those in medical anthropology, philosophy, and the
social study of science, technology, and medicine.
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