The Body Multiple is an extraordinary ethnography of an ordinary
disease. Drawing on fieldwork in a Dutch university hospital, Annemarie
Mol looks at the day-to-day diagnosis and treatment of atherosclerosis.
A patient information leaflet might describe atherosclerosis as the
gradual obstruction of the arteries, but in hospital practice this one
medical condition appears to be many other things. From one moment,
place, apparatus, specialty, or treatment, to the next, a slightly
different "atherosclerosis" is being discussed, measured, observed, or
stripped away. This multiplicity does not imply fragmentation; instead,
the disease is made to cohere through a range of tactics including
transporting forms and files, making images, holding case conferences,
and conducting doctor-patient conversations.
The Body Multiple juxtaposes two distinct texts. Alongside Mol's
analysis of her ethnographic material--interviews with doctors and
patients and observations of medical examinations, consultations, and
operations--runs a parallel text in which she reflects on the relevant
literature. Mol draws on medical anthropology, sociology, feminist
theory, philosophy, and science and technology studies to reframe such
issues as the disease-illness distinction, subject-object relations,
boundaries, difference, situatedness, and ontology. In dialogue with one
another, Mol's two texts meditate on the multiplicity of
reality-in-practice.
Presenting philosophical reflections on the body and medical practice
through vivid storytelling, The Body Multiple will be important to
those in medical anthropology, philosophy, and the social study of
science, technology, and medicine.
