Examining the mechanisms of medical knowledge transfer, this article addresses the ways nonvisual senses are employed within medical training, asking about the role of sound, touch, and movement in transmitting knowledge of the body. Based on a 10‐month ethnography in a medical massage training course for blind students, the article examines the ways sensory medical knowledge is transferred in this setting. I discuss the multisensory characteristics of medical knowledge transfer, and the dual process inherent in this sensory pedagogy, in which senses such as touch and hearing undergo medicalization and scientification, while medicine enters the realm of the sensorial. Contributing to emerging research of nonvisual senses in medical training, this case study allows rethinking larger processes of medical knowing, challenging the dominancy of vision as the means of scientific knowledge transmission, and exposing the multisensorial elements of medical perception, and learning in general.
“You Can Learn Merely by Listening to the Way a Patient Walks through the Door”: The Transmission of Sensory Medical Knowledge
Gili HammerPublished In:32.1 March 2018
Cite As: Hammer, Gili. "“You Can Learn Merely by Listening to the Way a Patient Walks through the Door”: The Transmission of Sensory Medical Knowledge." Medical anthropology quarterly (2017).
Get Text: From Publisher
Geographical Area: Israel
Topics: Disability, Embodiment, Medicalization
- Narkomania: Drugs, HIV, and Citizenship in Ukraine September 25, 2020
- Viability: A Cultural Calculus of Personhood at the Beginnings of Life December 5, 2012
- Transitions, Access, Conversations: Editor’s Introduction June 4, 2013
- Aging Respectably by Rejecting Medicalization: Mexican Men’s Reasons for Not Using Erectile Dysfunction Drugs June 5, 2013
- Men’s Narratives of Vasectomy: Rearticulating Masculinity and Contraceptive Responsibility in San José, Costa Rica June 5, 2013
- Narkomania: Drugs, HIV, and Citizenship in Ukraine September 25, 2020
- The Colonial Life of Pharmaceuticals: Medicines and Modernity in Vietnam September 25, 2020
- Mobilizing Mutations: Human Genetics in the Age of Patient Advocacy September 25, 2020
- Privileges of Birth: Constellations of Care, Myth, and Race in South Africa September 25, 2020
- War and Health: The Medical Consequences of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan September 25, 2020
ACA
Affordable Healthcare Act
anthropocene
articles
biopolitics
body
body-environment
cyborg
editorial
environment
environmental anthropology
exposure
health and environment
healthcare
healthcare policy
healthcare reform
Healthcare under Trump
Health Policy
incarceration and healthcare
incinerators
LGBT
LGBTQ
LGBT rights
microbiome
Obamacare
open access
openings
peer review
phenomenology
pollution
prison healthcare
radioactive contamination
reproductive healthcare
risk
science writing
senses
sensing
sensory experiences
special issues
STS
toxicants
transgender medicine
Trump administration
women's health
women in prison
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.