ANTC61H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Immune System, Total Institution
Document Summary
Lecture 4 biomedicine as a cultural system of healing. Political and economic formations provide metaphors for science and culture (these are not separate) Knowledge/beliefs from science/medicine inform and organize cultural practice; e. g. metaphors of: mind-body dualism, body as machine, immune system as flexible accumulation. We see suffering as individual and an exclusion. See suffering as a commodity being sick gives you certain privileges. The appeal of images, the dismay of experience . Use pictures to evoke infotainment always a source of information and entertainment. We trust the doctor"s authority and that they will give an accurate diagnosis. We see their control as beneficial, as long as they heal us. Medical training actually consolidates the individual physicians" world views. Has to do with the idea that doctors are neutral and objective and should be rightly so. Medical training consolidates and naturalizes science ideologies and subjects practitioners and the public to particular forms of practice and control: neutrality and objectivity.
