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The Social Construction of Disease
A historical exploration of scientific disputes on the causation of so-called ‘prion diseases’, this fascinating book covers diseases including Scrapie, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). Firstly tracing the twentieth-century history of disease research and biomedicine, the text then focuses on the relations between scientific practice and wider social transformations, before finally building upon the sociologically informed methodological framework. Incisive and thought-provoking, The Social Construction of Disease provides a valuable contribution to that well-established tradition of social history of science, which refers primarily to the theoretical works of the sociology of scientific knowledge.
Impure Cultures
How are the worlds of university biology and commerce blurring? Many university leaders see the amalgamation of academic and commercial cultures as crucial to the future vitality of higher education in the United States. In Impure Cultures, Daniel Lee Kleinman questions the effect of this blending on the character of academic science. Using data he gathered as an ethnographic observer in a plant pathology lab at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Kleinman examines the infinite and inescapable influence of the commercial world on biology in academia today. Contrary to much of the existing literature and common policy practices, he argues that the direct and explicit relations between university scientists and industrial concerns are not the gravest threat to academic research. Rather, Kleinman points to the less direct, but more deeply-rooted effects of commercial factors on the practice of university biology. He shows that to truly understand research done at universities today, it is first necessary to explore the systematic, pervasive, and indirect effects of the commercial world on contemporary academic practice.
Growing Explanations
For much of the twentieth century scientists sought to explain objects and processes by reducing them to their components—nuclei into protons and neutrons, proteins into amino acids, and so on—but over the past forty years there has been a marked turn toward explaining phenomena by building them up rather than breaking them down. This collection reflects on the history and significance of this turn toward “growing explanations” from the bottom up. The essays show how this strategy—based on a widespread appreciation for complexity even in apparently simple processes and on the capacity of computers to simulate such complexity—has played out in a broad array of sciences. They descr...
Pharmaceutical Research, Democracy and Conspiracy
Clinical trials used to be conducted overwhelmingly in the US and Europe but for a range of economic, technical and ethical reasons, the number of multicentre studies recruiting subjects in different regions of the World has grown exponentially. New medicines are tested in vast research networks involving several countries, hospitals and other medical institutions, and hundreds of individual subjects. In Pharmaceutical Research, Democracy and Conspiracy, Edison Bicudo examines the connections between global and local scales, exploring how it is possible for social actors as different as global companies and patients of local hospitals to come together and establish social relationships that ...
Disciplining Reproduction
Reproductive issues from sex and contraception to abortion and cloning have been controversial for centuries, and scientists who attempted to turn the study of reproduction into a discipline faced an uphill struggle. Adele Clarke's engrossing story of the search for reproductive knowledge across the twentieth century is colorful and fraught with conflict. Modern scientific study of reproduction, human and animal, began in the United States in an overlapping triad of fields: biology, medicine, and agriculture. Clarke traces the complicated paths through which physiological approaches to reproduction led to endocrinological approaches, creating along the way new technoscientific products from ...
Warm Climates and Western Medicine
It is generally assumed that tropical medicine only emerged as a medical specialism in the late nineteenth century under the aegis of men like Patrick Manson and Ronald Ross. However, recent research (much of it brought together for the first time in this volume) shows that a distinctive medicine of 'warm climates' came into existence much earlier in areas like the West-Indies, Indonesia and India. Europeans' health needs were one imperative, but this was more than just the medicine of Europe shipped overseas. Contact with non-Western medical ideas and practices was also a stimulus, as was Europe's encounter with unfamiliar environments and peoples. These essays provide valuable insights int...
Matthew Boulton
Matthew Boulton was a leading industrialist, entrepreneur and Enlightenment figure. Often overshadowed through his association with James Watt, his Soho manufactories put Birmingham at the centre of what has recently been termed 'The Industrial Enlightenment'. Exploring his many activities and manufactures-and the regional, national and international context in which he operated-this publication provides a valuable index to the current state of Boulton studies. Combining original contributions from social, economic, and cultural historians, with those of historians of science, technology and art, archaeologists and heritage professionals, the book sheds new light on the general culture of the eighteenth century, including patterns of work, production and consumption of the products of art and industry. The book also extends and enhances knowledge of the Enlightenment, industrialization and the processes of globalization in the eighteenth century.
Crooked Cats
"The last decade has seen the increasing entry of big cats-lions, tigers, and leopards-into human settlements in India. Most big cats co-reside with humans. But some have become "crooked"-killing people, often serially, and frightening residents in villages and cities. This new book, by big cat connoisseur and anthropologist Nayanika Mathur, lays bare the peculiar atmosphere of terror these encounters create, reinforced by stories, conspiracy theories, rumors, anger, and news reports about charismatic "celebrity" cats. There are various theories of why and how a big cat turns to eating people, and Mathur lays out the dominant ideas offered by the residents with whom she works. These vary fro...
Cholera in Detroit
During the mid- to late 19th century, Detroit and the American Midwest were the sites of five major cholera epidemics. The first of these, the 1832 outbreak, was of particular significance--an unexpected consequence of the Black Hawk War. In order to suppress the Native American uprising then taking place in regions around present-day Illinois, General Winfield Scott had been ordered by President Andrew Jackson to transport his troops from Virginia to the Midwest. While passing through New York State the men were exposed to cholera, transmitting the disease to the population of Detroit once they reached that city. As a result, cholera was established as an endemic disease in the upper Midwest. Further outbreaks took place in 1834, 1849, 1854 and 1866, ultimately resulting in the deaths of hundreds of individuals. This book is the story of those outbreaks and the efforts to control them.
Companion Encyclopedia of Science in the Twentieth Century
With over forty chapters, written by leading scholars, this comprehensive volume represents the best work in America, Europe and Asia. Geographical diversity of the authors is reflected in the different perspectives devoted to the subject, and all major disciplinary developments are covered. There are also sections concerning the countries that have made the most significant contributions, the relationship between science and industry, the importance of instrumentation, and the cultural influence of scientific modes of thought. Students and professionals will come to appreciate how, and why, science has developed - as with any other human activity, it is subject to the dynamics of society and politics.
