Biomedicine as Culture

Instrumental Practices, Technoscientific Knowledge, and New Modes of Life

Edited by Regula Valérie Burri, Joseph Dumit

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About the Book

This volume offers interdisciplinary perspectives on contemporary biomedicine as a cultural practice. The collection of essays brings together leading scholars from cultural anthropology, sociology, history, and science studies to conduct a critical dialogue on the culture(s) of biomedical practice, discussing its epistemic, material, and social implications. The essays look at the ways new biomedical knowledge is constructed within hospitals and academic settings and at how this knowledge changes perceptions, material arrangements, and social relations, not only within clinics and scientific communities, but especially once it is diffused into a broader cultural context.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction Section 1: Social and Cultural Studies of Biomedicine 2. Medicalizing Culture(s) or Culturalizing Medicine(s) 3. Metaphors of Medicine and the Culture of Healing: Historical Perspectives 4. Medicine as Practice and Culture: The Analysis of Border Regimes and the Necessity of a Hermeneutics of Physical Bodies Section 2: Epistemic Practices and Material Culture(s) 5. The Future is Now: Locating Biomarkers for Dementia 6. Embodied Action, Enacted Bodies: The Example of Hypoglycaemia 7. Sociotechnical Anatomy 8. Risk and Safety in the Operating Theatre: An Ethnographic Study of Socio-Technical Practices Section 3: Biomedical Knowledge in Context 9. Genomic Susceptibility as an Emergent Form of Life?: Genetic Testing, Identity, and the Remit of Medicine 10. Susceptible Individuals and Risky Rights: Dimensions of Genetic Responsibility 11. 'Pop-Genes': An Investigation of 'the Gene' in Popular Parlance 12. Genetics and its Publics: Crafting Genetic Literacy and Identity in the Early 21st Century 13. Constructing the Digital Patient: Patient Organizations and the Development of Health Web Sites

About the Author(s)

Regula Valérie Burri is an affiliated research fellow at Collegium Helveticum, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and University of Zurich. Her doctoral thesis, "Doing Images: Zur Praxis medizinischer Bilder" (forthcoming), explores the social and cultural implications of medical imaging. She has been a Swiss National Science Foundation research fellow and holds appointments with several Swiss universities. Her research interests focus on the relationship between science, technology, and society. She is the coauthor of "Social Studies of Scientific Images and Visualization," in Ed Hackett et al., The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (with Joseph Dumit; MIT Press, forthcoming).


Joseph Dumit is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and the director of the program in Science and Technology Studies at University of California, Davis. His research interests are the anthropology of science, technology, and medicine; medical anthropology; and social studies. He is the author of Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity (Princeton University Press, 2004); and the coeditor of Cyborgs & Citadels: Anthropological Interventions in Emerging Sciences and Technologies (with Gary L. Downey; SAR Press, 1997), and Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots (with Robbie Davis-Floyd; Routledge, 1998). Dumit is the associate editor of the journal Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry.