American Medicine as Culture

by Howard F. Stein

Overview

This book situates biomedicine within American culture and argues that the very organization and practice of medicine are themselves cultural. It demonstrates the symbolic construction of clinical reality within American biomedicine and shows how biomedicine never leaves the realm of the personal.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367003197
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/07/2019
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Preface — Introduction — Medicine, Value Orientations, and Their Meanings — Medical Metaphors and Their Role in Clinical Decisionmaking and Practice — Medicine, Moralism, and Social Control — The Influence of Group Dynamics on Clinical Thinking and Practice — Money and Medicine: An Identity Problem — Socialization and The Process of Becoming a Physician — The Self of the Physician: Links Between Culture and Personality — Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

In this ethnographic account of the American medical system, the author uses anthropological, small-group, and psychoanalytic paradigms to interpret important, organizing facets of medical culture and to link that culture with personality dynamics of individual practitioners as well as with the currents of the wider society biomedicine serves. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews