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Physicians of Western Medicine

Anthropological Approaches to Theory and Practice

  • Book
  • © 1985

Overview

Editors:
  1. Robert A. Hann

    1. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, USA

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  2. Atwood D. Gaines

    1. Departments of Anthropology and Psychiatry, Case Western Reserve University and Medical School, Cleveland, USA

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

Part of the book series: Culture, Illness and Healing (CIHE, volume 6)

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Table of contents (12 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
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  2. Introductions

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. Among the Physicians: Encounter, Exchange and Transformation

      • Atwood D. Gaines, Robert A. Hahn
      Pages 3-22

    3. Including the Physician in Healer-Centered Research: Retrospect and Prospect

      • Thomas W. Maretzki
      Pages 23-47

  3. Core Medicine

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 49-49
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    2. A World of Internal Medicine: Portrait of an Internist

      • Robert A. Hahn
      Pages 51-111

  4. Medical Specialties

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 113-113
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    2. Models and Practice in Medicine: Menopause as Syndrome or Life Transition?

      • Margaret Lock
      Pages 115-139

    3. Mary; Patient as Emergent Symbol on A Pediatrics Ward: The Objectification of Meaning in Social Process

      • William Rittenberg
      Pages 141-153

    4. How Surgeons Make Decisions

      • Pearl Katz
      Pages 155-175

    5. Gentle Interrogation: Inquiry and Interaction in Brief Initial Psychiatric Evaluations

      • William Rittenberg, Ronald C. Simons
      Pages 177-191

    6. Reflexivity, Countertransference and Clinical Ethnography: A Case from a Psychiatric Cultural Consultation Clinic

      • Byron J. Good, Henry Herrera, Mary-Jo Delvecchio Good, James Cooper
      Pages 193-221

    7. The Once- and the Twice-Born: Self and Practice among Psychiatrists and Christian Psychiatrists

      • Atwood D. Gaines
      Pages 223-243

  5. Interrelations of Medical Specialties

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 245-245
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    2. Discourses on Physician Competence

      • Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good
      Pages 247-267

    3. Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry: Medicine as Patient, Marginality as Practice

      • Thomas M. Johnson
      Pages 269-292

    4. Disease and Pseudo-Disease: A Case History of Pseudo-Angina

      • Cecil G. Helman
      Pages 293-331

  6. Back Matter

    Pages 333-345
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Keywords

About this book

After putting down this weighty (in all senses of the word) collection, the reader, be she or he physician or social scientist, will (or at least should) feel uncomfortable about her or his taken-for-granted commonsense (therefore cultural) understanding of medicine. The editors and their collaborators show the medical leviathan, warts and all, for what it is: changing, pluralistic, problematic, powerful, provocative. What medicine proclaims itself to be - unified, scientific, biological and not social, non-judgmental - it is shown not to resemble very much. Those matters about which medicine keeps fairly silent, it turns out, come closer to being central to its clinical practice - managing errors and learning to conduct a shared moral dis­ course about mistakes, handling issues of competence and competition among biomedical practitioners, practicing in value-laden contexts on problems for which social science is a more relevant knowledge base than biological science, integrating folk and scientific models of illness in clinical communication, among a large number of highly pertinent ethnographic insights that illuminate medicine in the chapters that follow.

Reviews

`This book contains some excellent teaching materials for students in anthropology as well as medicine. For practioners of both disciplines, it will surely stimulate discussion about the nature of biomedicine and the ability of anthropology to comprehend it.'
American Anthropology (December 1986)
`The authors of this collection are to be congratulated for making such an engaging contribution to the scholarly exploration of contemporary medicine. These essays will prove, I hope, a source of inspiration and a referencepoint for many more studies to come.'
Social Science and Medicine, 24:9 (1987)
`These 12 articles by anthropologists break new ground in the area between medicine and social science in that all of the authors describe physicians at work. ...physicians are in for acute culture shock as they encounter familiar subjects portrayed from a different vantage point. ... Anthropologists will rightly consider this book a landmark volume and an impetus to future investigation in the new subspeciality of physician-watching.'
Annals of Internal Medicine, 103:3 (1985)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, USA

    Robert A. Hann

  • Departments of Anthropology and Psychiatry, Case Western Reserve University and Medical School, Cleveland, USA

    Atwood D. Gaines

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Physicians of Western Medicine

  • Book Subtitle: Anthropological Approaches to Theory and Practice

  • Editors: Robert A. Hann, Atwood D. Gaines

  • Series Title: Culture, Illness and Healing

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6430-3

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: D. Reidel Publishing Company 1985

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-90-277-1790-0Published: 31 December 1984

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-90-277-1881-5Published: 31 December 1984

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-009-6430-3Published: 06 December 2012

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: IX, 345

  • Topics: Anthropology, Sociology, general, Public Health

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