Medical Talk and Medical Work : The Liturgy of the Clinic

Atkinson, Paul

ISBN 10: 0803977301 / ISBN 13: 9780803977303

Published by SAGE Publications Ltd, 1995

About this Item

Unread book in perfect condition.

Seller Inventory # 3154871

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Medical Talk and Medical Work : The Liturgy of the Clinic
• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Publication Date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803977301
• ISBN 13: 9780803977303
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: As New

About this title

Synopsis

The development of a sociology of medical knowledge is both assessed and contributed to in Medical Talk and Medical Work.

Underlying the analysis is research on the work of haematologists, which offers a rich resource for understanding the complexities and contradictions between physical bodies and social embodiment, medical talk and technical apparatus. Using but moving beyond this specific material, Paul Atkinson demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of the existing understanding of medical knowledge. Among the issues explored are: the place of interaction among doctors, rather than between doctors and patients, in defining the construction of medical knowledge; the ways in which clinical opinion is socially produced and the nature of the local settings through which this process occurs; and the relations among medical knowledge, medical language and the increasingly technological contexts of contemporary medical practice.

About the Author

Paul Atkinson is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Cardiff University. Recent publications include For Ethnography (SAGE 2014) and Thinking Ethnographically (SAGE 2017). The fourth book in his quartet will be Crafting Ethnography, also for SAGE. The fourth edition of Hammersley and Atkinson Ethnography: Principles in Practice was published by Routledge in 2019. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and of the Learned Society of Wales.