ABSTRACT

This book situates biomedicine within American culture and argues that the very organization and practice of medicine are themselves cultural. It demonstrates the symbolic construction of clinical reality within American biomedicine and shows how biomedicine never leaves the realm of the personal.

chapter |25 pages

Introduction

An Anthropological Interpretation of American Biomedical Culture

chapter Three|30 pages

Medicine, Moralism, and Social Control

chapter Five|23 pages

Money and Medicine: An Identity Problem

chapter |9 pages

Conclusion

Implications of an Anthropological Approach for the Study, Teaching, and Practice of Biomedicine