Medical Technologies and the Life World

Although the use of new health technologies in healthcare and medicine is generally seen as beneficial, there has been little analysis of the impact of such technologies on people's lives and understandings of health and illness. This ground-breaking book explores how new technologies not only provide hope for cure and well-being, but also introduce new ethical dilemmas and raise questions about the 'natural' body. Focusing on the ways new health technologies intervene into our lives and affect our ideas about normalcy, the body and identity, Medical Technologies and the Life World explores: - how new health technologies are understood by lay people and patients - how the outcomes of these technologies are communicated in various clinical settings - how these technologies can alter our notions of health and illness and create 'new illness'. Written by authors with differing backgrounds in phenomenology, social psychology, social anthropology, communication studies and the nursing sciences, this sensational text is essential reading for students and academics of medical sociology, health and allied studies, and anyone with an interest in new health technologies.

Sonia Olin Lauritzen, Lars-Christer Hyden

Chapter 1 Medical technologies, the lifeworld and normality: An introduction Sonja Olin Lauritzen & Lars-Christer Hydén Chapter 2 Learning to talk and talking about talk: Professional identity and communicative technology Lars-Christer Hydén & Antje Lumma Chapter 3 What's in a Pap smear? Biology, culture, technology and self in the cytology laboratory Anette Forss Chapter 4 Gyneacologists and geneticists as storytellers: Disease, choice and normality as the fabric of narratives on pre-implantation genetic diagnosis Kristin Zeiler Chapter 5 The normal baby-to-be: Lay and professional negotiations of the ultrasound image Ann-Cristine Jonsson Chapter 6 A normal pregnancy? Women's experiences of being at high risk after ultrasound screening for Down syndrome Sonja Olin Lauritzen, Susanne Georgsson Öhman & Sissel Saltvedt Chapter 7 Imaging technology and the detection of 'cold aneurysms': Illness narratives on the Internet Gunilla Tegern Chapter 8 Phenomenology listens to Prozac: Analyzing the SSRI revolution Fredrik Svenaeus