Fracture : adventures of a broken body / Ann Oakley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Oakley, Ann.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social medicine.

Fractures.

Accident victims.

Medicine--History.

Medicine.

History.

Health--Social aspects.

Health.

Health--Philosophy.

Medical jurisprudence.

Physical Description:

vi, 186 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

Place of Publication:

Bristol : Policy Press, 2007.

Summary:

The starting point of Ann Oakley's fascinating new book is the fracture of her right arm in the grounds of a hotel in the USA. What begins as an accident becomes a journey into some critical themes of modern Western culture, the crisis of embodiment and the perfect self: the confusion between body and identity; the commodification of bodies and body parts; the intrusive surveillance and proliteering of medicine and the law; the problem of ageing; and the identification of women, particularly, with bodies - from the intensely ambiguous two-in-one state of pregnancy to women's later transformation into unproductive, brittle skeletons.

Fracture mixes personal experience (the author's and other people's) with 'facts' derived from other literatures, including the history of medicine, neurology the sociology of health and illness, philosophy, legal discourses on the right to life, and observations on people as victims of a greedy litigation system. A challenging book to classify, it spans fiction, non-fiction, autobiography and social theory.

Contents:

1 An accident at White Creek Lodge 1

2 Our bodies, ourselves 11

3 Nervous disorder 31

4 Right hands 45

5 The daily drama of the body 59

6 Living corpses 71

7 Old bones 95

8 Two in one 115

9 The law of uncivil actions 127

10 Accidental bodies 147.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 155-182) and index.

ISBN:

9781861349385

1861349386

1861349378

9781861349378

OCLC:

82672422