New Medical Technologies and Society: Reordering LifeISBN: 978-0-7456-2723-6
Hardcover
232 pages
July 2004, Polity
Other Available Formats: Paperback
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New Medical Technologies and Society provides a critical
introduction to the role and cultural significance of technological
innovation in redefining the boundaries of medicine and the body,
tracing this process through the figure of "the lifecourse".
Drawing on approaches from sociology and Science and Technology
Studies, the authors explore key issues, theories and debates at
the junctures of bodies and medicine. In a style that is both
innovative and challenging, Nik Brown and Andrew Webster open up an
important examination of new medical technologies not only for
those directly engaged, but for a wider audience interested in the
ways in which contemporary technologies can be interrogated through
core sociological inquiry. They argue that, whilst many
technologies emerge from and extend long-standing frameworks of
medical treatment, genuinely novel and radical challenges to our
interpretations of embodiment are emerging.
The book will be essential reading for both students and scholars of the sociology of science and technology, medical sociology, social theory, genetics and informatics.