Science, Technology, and Human Health: The Value of STS in Medical and Health Humanities Pedagogy

The Journal of Medical Humanities
Julia Knopes

Abstract

As the number of medical and health humanities degree programs in the United States rapidly increases (Berry, Lamb and Jones 2016, 2017), it is especially timely to consider the range of specific disciplinary (and multidisciplinary) perspectives that might benefit students enrolled in these programs. This paper discusses the inclusion of one such perspective from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS.) The author asserts that STS benefits students in the medical and health humanities in four particular ways, by: (1) challenging the "progress narrative" around the advancement of biomedicine as scientific practice, (2) evaluating the meaning of technology, especially in how technology orients us towards sickness and how health technology is in turn shaped by social and cultural values, (3) assessing the plurality of biomedical epistemologies, rather than assuming biomedicine is one, cohesive body of knowledge that does not differ across contexts, and (4) critiquing bias in biomedical practice and science, especially in the marginalization of women's voices and in the racial and postcolonial trajectories of contemporary biomedicine. The paper discusses the theoretical importance of these four trajectories to the medical...Continue Reading

References

Sep 1, 1982·Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry·A D Gaines
Mar 21, 2008·Qualitative Health Research·Wendy AustinErika Goble
Feb 21, 2009·Social Studies of Science·Jonathan Kahn
Feb 13, 2010·Sociology of Health & Illness·Meika Loe
Feb 26, 2010·Medical Anthropology·Ian Whitmarsh
May 23, 2012·Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry·Vanessa M Hildebrand
Dec 24, 2013·Bulletin of the History of Medicine·Beth Linker
May 30, 2015·Social Science & Medicine·Kelly Underman
Dec 23, 2015·Behavioral Sciences·Jack Drescher
Apr 4, 2017·Medical Anthropology Quarterly·Linda M HuntHeather A Howard
Jul 25, 2017·The Journal of Medical Humanities·Sarah BerryErin Lamb

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