Hospital Land USA : Sociological Adventures in Medicalization

In Hospital Land USA, Wendy Simonds analyzes the wide-reaching powers of medicalization: the dynamic processes by which medical authorities, institutions, and ideologies impact our everyday experiences, culture, and social life. Simonds documents her own Hospital Land adventures and draws on a wide range of U.S. cultural representations -- from memoirs to medical mail, from hospital signs to disaster movies -- in order to urge critical thinking about conventional notions of care, health, embodiment, identity, suffering, and mortality. This book is intended for general readers, medical practitioners, undergraduate and graduate students in courses on medical sociology, medicine, medical ethics, nursing, public health, carework, visual culture, cultural studies, and gerontology. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION: COLLABORATING WITH THE DEAD 1 CHET GOES TO CHEMO: THE SEMIOTICS AND SADISM OF THE MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX 2 MORE ADVENTURES IN HOSPITAL LAND: AN ALTERNATIVE MEDICAL HISTORY 3 SICK STORIES: MEDICALIZED MEDIA, COLLECTIVE CULTURAL ANXIETIES, AND THERAPEUTIC VOYEURISM CONCLUSION: INSTEAD OF A HAPPY ENDING APPENDIX A: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HOSPITAL LAND APPENDIX B: DISEASE DISASTERS APPENDIX C: MELODRAMATIC MEMOIRS APPENDIX D: DEATH COMEDIES BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX "Hospital Land USA is analyzes hospital culture using images, narratives, to walk students through the experience of medicalization. Using a combination of analysis and anecdote, Simonds deconstructs hospital culture in order to compel critical thinking about medicalization. Simonds illuminates broad cultural in/sensibilities and conventions around health care, mortality, and identity in ways that are intellectually engaging and useful for understanding and coping with Hospital Land."--Provided by publisher