**Shortlisted for the BSA Sociology of Health and Illness Book Prize
2010**
What is good care? In this innovative and compelling book, Annemarie Mol
argues that good care has little to do with 'patient choice' and,
therefore, creating more opportunities for patient choice will not
improve health care.
Although it is possible to treat people who seek professional help as
customers or citizens, Mol argues that this undermines ways of thinking
and acting crucial to health care. Illustrating the discussion with
examples from diabetes clinics and diabetes self care, the book presents
the 'logic of care' in a step by step contrast with the 'logic of
choice'. She concludes that good care is not a matter of making well
argued individual choices but is something that grows out of
collaborative and continuing attempts to attune knowledge and
technologies to diseased bodies and complex lives.
Mol does not criticise the practices she encountered in her field work
as messy or ad hoc, but makes explicit what it is that motivates them:
an intriguing combination of adaptability and perseverance. The Logic
of Care: Health and the problem of patient choice is crucial reading
for all those interested in the theory and practice of care, including
sociologists, anthropologists and health care professionals. It will
also speak to policymakers and become a valuable source of inspiration
for patient activists.
