Skip to main content
Log in

Abstract

This essay discusses three interpretiveconcepts that link bioscience and biotechnologyto society: the medical imaginary, thebiotechnical embrace, and the clinicalnarrative. Drawing on research carried out inthe United States and internationally on theculture and political economy of biomedicine,the essay examines these interpretive conceptsthrough examples from studies of patients,clinicians, scientists, and venture capitalistsengaged in the worlds of oncology and hightechnology medicine. These interpretiveconcepts contribute to an understanding of howthe affective dimensions of the experience of patients, clinicians and scientists invested inhigh technology medicine are fundamental tobioscience and biomedicine, and to thepolitical economy and culture of hope.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

REFERENCES

  • Bastos, Cristiana 1999 Global Responses to AIDS: Science in Emergency. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brooks, Peter 1984 Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. New York: Vintage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cooke, Robert 2001 Dr. Folkman's War: Angiogenesis and the Struggle to Defeat Cancer. New York: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eco, Umberto 1994 Six Walks in the Fictional Woods. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Farmer, Paul 1999 Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fischer, Michael M.J. 1991 Anthropology As Cultural Critique: Inserts for the 1990s Cultural Studies of Science, Visual-Virtual Realities, and Post-Trauma Polities. Cultural Anthropology 6: 525-537.

    Google Scholar 

  • Garro, Linda 1996 Intercultural Variation in Causal Accounts Of Diabetes: A Comparison of Three Canadian Anishinaabe (Ojibway) Communities. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 20(4): 381-420.

    Google Scholar 

  • Good, Byron 1994 Medicine, Rationality and Experience. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Good, Byron and Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good 1994 In the Subjunctive Mode: Epilepsy Narratives in Turkey. Social Science and Medicine 38(6): 835-842.

    Google Scholar 

  • 2000 'Fiction' and 'Historicity' in Doctors' Stories: Social and Narrative Dimensions of Learning Medicine. In Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing. Cheryl Mattingly and Linda Garro, eds Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Good, Mary-Jo DelVecchio 1995a Cultural Studies of Biomedicine: An Agenda for Research. Social Science and Medicine 41(4): 461-473.

    Google Scholar 

  • 1995b American Medicine: The Quest for Competence. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Good, Mary-Jo DelVecchio and Byron Good 2000 Clinical Narratives and the Study of Contemporary Doctor-Patient Relationships. In The Handbook of Social Studies in Health and Medicine. Gary L. Albrecht, Ray Fitzpatrick and Susan C. Scrimshaw, eds London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Good, Mary-Jo DelVecchio, Tsuenetsu Munakata, Yasuki Kobayashi, Cheryl Mattingly and Byron Good 1994 Oncology and Narrative Time. Social Science and Medicine 38(6): 855-862.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gould, Stephen Jay 1996 Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin. New York: Harmony Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Groopman, Jerome 2000 Second Opinions: Stories of Intuition and Choice in the Changing World of Medicine. New York: Viking.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holtzman, Steven 2001 Interview with Michael M.J. Fischer, Byron Good and Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good. January 16.

  • Iser, Wolfgang 1978 The Act of Reading. A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marcus, George, ed. 1995 Technoscientific Imaginaries: Conversations, Profiles and Memoirs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  • 1998 Ethnography in/of theWorld System: The Emergence of Multi-sited Ethnography. In Ethnography through Thick and Thin. G. Marcus, ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  • Mattingly, Cheryl 1994 The Concept of Therapeutic "Emplotment." Social Science and Medicine 38(6): 811-822.

    Google Scholar 

  • 1998 Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mattingly, Cheryl and Linda Garro, eds 2000 Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peters, William 1994 Duke University Bone Marrow Transplantation Program, New Orleans Hearing of the Federal Insurance Commission, December 5.

  • Rabinow, Paul 1999 French DNA: Trouble in Purgatory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ricoeur, Paul 1981a Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. John B. Thompson, ed. and trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • 1981b Narrative Time. In On Narrative. W.J.T. Mitchell, ed., pp. 165-186. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rouse, Joseph 1992 What Are Cultural Studies of Scientific Knowledge? Configurations (1): 1-22.

  • Tasch, Jacqueline A., ed. 1998 Art.Rage.Us: Art and Writing by Women with Breast Cancer. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Waldholz, Michael 2000 South African Doctor Admits Falsifying Data on Treatments for Breast Cancer. Wall Street Journal, February 7, p. B2.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Good, MJ.D. The Biotechnical Embrace. Cult Med Psychiatry 25, 395–410 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013097002487

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013097002487

Navigation