ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues that the cultural configuration, its ethos, and interlacing themes are quite often shared by those who are labeled as well as by those who label. It shows how cultural deviants and cultural exemplars are consciously and explicitly opposite poles of a common, underlying, unconscious structure. The book explores the cultural production of medical knowledge and practice, and inquires into the processes that produce culture as biomedicine’s context. It traces the articulation of contemporary medicine with wider cultural currents and to interpret the nature of the fit among individual practitioner, medicine, and culture. The book focuses on sixteen years’ experience as clinical teacher, supervisor, and ethnographer in medical education settings. It examines the nature and meaning of “social control” and the fear of loss of control in American medicine and society.
