Book Description

"This is an extraordinary book—riveting story, concise scholarship, experimental ethnography—and it is beautifully told. Greenhalgh makes a cogent and powerful analysis of the sociopolitical sources of pain through feminist, cultural, and political understandings of the nature of medical science and medical practice in the United States."—Sharon Kaufman, author of The Healer's Tale "Far above a simple telling of an illness, Greenhalgh takes the experience as a way to view gendered relations in medical care, the seduction of science for the physician and the patient, and the creation of facts and selves in the treatment of pain. She sets a new standard for the practice of autoethnography."—Virginia Olesen, Professor Emerita of Sociology, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, School of Nursing, University of California, San Francisco "A compellingly told story that advances our understanding of the meaning of chronic illness, particularly for women. This work adds a new dimension to the genre of illness narratives."—Susan DiGiacomo, Series Editor, Theory and Practice in Medical Anthropology and International Health "A very useful and very well written book. . . . It states the issues in the culture of biomedicine field effectively and makes them relevant."—Arthur Kleinman, author of Writing at the Margin: Discourse between Anthropology and Medicine "A deeply troubling, meticulous account about the chasm between medical orthodoxy and the subjective experience of chronic illness. This courageous book is essential reading for physicians and the public at large."—Margaret Lock, author of Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America