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Putting a Name to It: Diagnosis in Contemporary Society


Putting a Name to It: Diagnosis in Contemporary Society

Paperback by Jutel, Annemarie (Victoria University of Wellington); Conrad, Peter (Harry Coplan Professor of Social Sciences, Brandeis University)

Putting a Name to It: Diagnosis in Contemporary Society

£30.50

ISBN:
9781421415741
Publication Date:
26 Jan 2015
Language:
English
Publisher:
Johns Hopkins University Press
Pages:
200 pages
Format:
Paperback
For delivery:
New product available - 9781421448923
Putting a Name to It: Diagnosis in Contemporary Society

Description

Over a decade after medical sociologist Phil Brown called for a sociology of diagnosis, Putting a Name to It provides the first book-length, comprehensive framework for this emerging subdiscipline of medical sociology. Diagnosis is central to medicine. It creates social order, explains illness, identifies treatments, and predicts outcomes. Using concepts of medical sociology, Annemarie Goldstein Jutel sheds light on current knowledge about the components of diagnosis to outline how a sociology of diagnosis would function. She situates it within the broader discipline, lays out the directions it should explore, and discusses how the classification of illness and framing of diagnosis relate to social status and order. Jutel explains why this matters not just to doctor-patient relationships but also to the entire medical system. As a result, she argues, the sociological realm of diagnosis encompasses not only the ongoing controversy surrounding revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in psychiatry but also hot-button issues such as genetic screening and pharmaceutical industry disease mongering. Both a challenge and a call to arms, Putting a Name to It is a lucid, persuasive argument for formalizing, professionalizing, and advancing longstanding practice. Jutel's innovative, open approach and engaging arguments will find support among medical sociologists and practitioners and across much of the medical system.

Contents

Foreword, by Peter Conrad Preface Introduction: What's in a Name? A Place for a Sociology of Diagnosis? An Avenue for Understanding 1. Lumping or Splitting: Classification in Medical Diagnosis The Aims of Classification Classification of Diseases Classification Systems Revealing Classificatory Politics in Diagnosis 2. Social Framing and Diagnosis: Corpulence and Fetal Death Corpulence Fetal Death Frame and Be Framed 3. What's Wrong with Me? Diagnosis and the Patient-Doctor Relationship Illness and Disease Medical Authority Changing Roles in Diagnosis What Next? 4. Beyond Our Ken? Contested Diagnoses and the Medically Unexplained Medically Unexplained Symptoms Discovery of Disease Whose Diagnosis? Splitting from Diagnosis? 5. Driving Diagnosis: Peddlers and Pushers Engines of Diagnosis Female Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder Discussion 6. "There Is Nothing So Small as to Escape Our Inquiry" Technologies of Diagnosis Technology and Diagnostic Categories Technology and the Diagnostic Process Screening Hope Conclusion: Directions for the Sociology of Diagnosis Creation Application Allocation Exploitation Moving Forward Notes References Index

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