Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
The book traces the interactions of American allopathic medicine, industrial capitalism, and the human desire for sleep from the late 18th century through the turn of the 21st century. The foundation ...
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The book traces the interactions of American allopathic medicine, industrial capitalism, and the human desire for sleep from the late 18th century through the turn of the 21st century. The foundation of contemporary American sleep is laid in the 19th century, when industrial workday demands the coordination and consolidation of sleeping and waking patterns. What was lost in this transition was unconsolidated sleep – instead of two nightly periods of rest, or daily naps supplemented with nightly sleep, one eight hour period of sleep was substituted as a new norm. This norm laid the basis for the emerging field of sleep medicine, which took as its primary concern the eradication of napping and insomnia, and substituting eight regular and consolidated hours of sleep. This invention of consolidated sleep led to the eventual pathologization of many forms of sleep, and provided the basis for contemporary sleep medicine. The present interest in sleep, exemplified by advertising campaigns for “Z drugs” – a new chemical that promotes and consolidates sleep – is not so much new as an intensification of a two hundred year old interest in making “normal” American sleep. In the present, I focus on the lives of physicians, scientists, patients and their families as they deal with the social frictions that sleep disorders are accepted as causing. I argue in the conclusion that by recognizing the human limits of sleep, we can apprehend sleep’s variations as non-pathological, and that with more flexible social institutions and expectations, the medicalization of sleep might be subverted.Less
The book traces the interactions of American allopathic medicine, industrial capitalism, and the human desire for sleep from the late 18th century through the turn of the 21st century. The foundation of contemporary American sleep is laid in the 19th century, when industrial workday demands the coordination and consolidation of sleeping and waking patterns. What was lost in this transition was unconsolidated sleep – instead of two nightly periods of rest, or daily naps supplemented with nightly sleep, one eight hour period of sleep was substituted as a new norm. This norm laid the basis for the emerging field of sleep medicine, which took as its primary concern the eradication of napping and insomnia, and substituting eight regular and consolidated hours of sleep. This invention of consolidated sleep led to the eventual pathologization of many forms of sleep, and provided the basis for contemporary sleep medicine. The present interest in sleep, exemplified by advertising campaigns for “Z drugs” – a new chemical that promotes and consolidates sleep – is not so much new as an intensification of a two hundred year old interest in making “normal” American sleep. In the present, I focus on the lives of physicians, scientists, patients and their families as they deal with the social frictions that sleep disorders are accepted as causing. I argue in the conclusion that by recognizing the human limits of sleep, we can apprehend sleep’s variations as non-pathological, and that with more flexible social institutions and expectations, the medicalization of sleep might be subverted.
Peter Zachar
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780262027045
- eISBN:
- 9780262322270
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262027045.003.0012
- Subject:
- Psychology, Clinical Psychology
This chapter explores the claim that psychiatry has failed to make progress and gotten on the wrong track by expanding the diagnostic system to include conditions that are not really disorders. In ...
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This chapter explores the claim that psychiatry has failed to make progress and gotten on the wrong track by expanding the diagnostic system to include conditions that are not really disorders. In other words, some believe that much of the imperfect community is a classificatory mistake as a result of over medicalization. Progress, it is said, would result in classifying only real disorders. A more pragmatic, less metaphysically encumbered notion of progress is offered. The history of what many consider to be the ultimate mythical psychiatric disorder – hysteria – is reviewed. Hysteria is analyzed in nominalist fashion examining its conceptual contrasts, seeing how it has been decomposed into components, and reviewing its stratification in the DSM. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of metaphysical concepts such as real and objective for thinking philosophically about psychiatric disorders, urging also, that we think philosophically about these metaphysical concepts themselves.Less
This chapter explores the claim that psychiatry has failed to make progress and gotten on the wrong track by expanding the diagnostic system to include conditions that are not really disorders. In other words, some believe that much of the imperfect community is a classificatory mistake as a result of over medicalization. Progress, it is said, would result in classifying only real disorders. A more pragmatic, less metaphysically encumbered notion of progress is offered. The history of what many consider to be the ultimate mythical psychiatric disorder – hysteria – is reviewed. Hysteria is analyzed in nominalist fashion examining its conceptual contrasts, seeing how it has been decomposed into components, and reviewing its stratification in the DSM. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of metaphysical concepts such as real and objective for thinking philosophically about psychiatric disorders, urging also, that we think philosophically about these metaphysical concepts themselves.
James Tabery
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780262027373
- eISBN:
- 9780262324144
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262027373.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Depending on which gene a child has, being sent to daycare can either increase or decrease a child’s chances of developing allergies. Likewise, children with one form of a gene respond better to an ...
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Depending on which gene a child has, being sent to daycare can either increase or decrease a child’s chances of developing allergies. Likewise, children with one form of a gene respond better to an empathy-oriented approach to discipline, while children with the other form of the gene respond better to a punishment-oriented approach to discipline. Research on these cases of gene-environment interaction raises the prospect of a “genetic guide to parenting”—the idea being that information about the child’s genome would inform parental decisions about everything from whether or not to send a child to daycare, to how to respond to the next temper tantrum. As calls for the whole genome sequencing of newborns increase and the goal of a $1000 genome grow near, the reality of a genetic guide to parenting becomes more likely. This chapter considers what a genetic guide to parenting might look like, evaluating the promises and perils of this new technology as they relate to concerns about medicalization and genetic determinism.Less
Depending on which gene a child has, being sent to daycare can either increase or decrease a child’s chances of developing allergies. Likewise, children with one form of a gene respond better to an empathy-oriented approach to discipline, while children with the other form of the gene respond better to a punishment-oriented approach to discipline. Research on these cases of gene-environment interaction raises the prospect of a “genetic guide to parenting”—the idea being that information about the child’s genome would inform parental decisions about everything from whether or not to send a child to daycare, to how to respond to the next temper tantrum. As calls for the whole genome sequencing of newborns increase and the goal of a $1000 genome grow near, the reality of a genetic guide to parenting becomes more likely. This chapter considers what a genetic guide to parenting might look like, evaluating the promises and perils of this new technology as they relate to concerns about medicalization and genetic determinism.
Frida Beckman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748645923
- eISBN:
- 9780748689170
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748645923.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter investigates how discourses on disability may assist the reconsideration of Deleuze’s understanding of sexual pleasure. Deleuze critiques the hierarchal organisation of bodies and their ...
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This chapter investigates how discourses on disability may assist the reconsideration of Deleuze’s understanding of sexual pleasure. Deleuze critiques the hierarchal organisation of bodies and their facialisation through social, political and gendered functions, and yet, a closer look at the rerouting of sexual pleasures of anomalous bodies suggests that his rejection of the orgasm rests also on ableist assumptions about how bodies work. Employing Deleuzian concepts such as becoming and faciality, this chapter analyses the ‘disabling’ of sexuality, that is, the way that sexual pleasure is hijacked by cultural, political, commercial and medical discourses. At the same time, reading Deleuze through discourses on disability makes it possible to ask if bodies that, in different ways, fail to function according to predetermined standards can express more productive relations between the orgasm and the body than the one Deleuze envisions.Less
This chapter investigates how discourses on disability may assist the reconsideration of Deleuze’s understanding of sexual pleasure. Deleuze critiques the hierarchal organisation of bodies and their facialisation through social, political and gendered functions, and yet, a closer look at the rerouting of sexual pleasures of anomalous bodies suggests that his rejection of the orgasm rests also on ableist assumptions about how bodies work. Employing Deleuzian concepts such as becoming and faciality, this chapter analyses the ‘disabling’ of sexuality, that is, the way that sexual pleasure is hijacked by cultural, political, commercial and medical discourses. At the same time, reading Deleuze through discourses on disability makes it possible to ask if bodies that, in different ways, fail to function according to predetermined standards can express more productive relations between the orgasm and the body than the one Deleuze envisions.
Simon Jarrett
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526125316
- eISBN:
- 9781526136213
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526125316.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, Social History
This chapter explores the development of the legal concepts of idiocy and imbecility over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, examining legal theory as well as evidence from civil court cases to ...
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This chapter explores the development of the legal concepts of idiocy and imbecility over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, examining legal theory as well as evidence from civil court cases to reveal an ongoing conflict between libertarian resistance to state intervention in the lives of citizens, however mentally incapacitated they might be, and a belief that the state should be responsible for protecting individuals against exploitation and the corruption of bloodlines. From the late eighteenth century, French medico-legal theorists, supported by the ‘scientific’ enlightenment ideals of the French revolution, proposed a medicalised appropriation of legal decision-making over capacity. While these ideas gained some currency among a small group of British medical men working in the field of idiocy, they faced strong public and legal resistance throughout the nineteenth century on the grounds of liberty of the subject. Both legal and medical formulations of idiocy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries borrowed heavily from popular, ‘common-sense’ public notions about what constituted an idiot.
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This chapter explores the development of the legal concepts of idiocy and imbecility over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, examining legal theory as well as evidence from civil court cases to reveal an ongoing conflict between libertarian resistance to state intervention in the lives of citizens, however mentally incapacitated they might be, and a belief that the state should be responsible for protecting individuals against exploitation and the corruption of bloodlines. From the late eighteenth century, French medico-legal theorists, supported by the ‘scientific’ enlightenment ideals of the French revolution, proposed a medicalised appropriation of legal decision-making over capacity. While these ideas gained some currency among a small group of British medical men working in the field of idiocy, they faced strong public and legal resistance throughout the nineteenth century on the grounds of liberty of the subject. Both legal and medical formulations of idiocy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries borrowed heavily from popular, ‘common-sense’ public notions about what constituted an idiot.
Sally Mayall Brasher
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526119285
- eISBN:
- 9781526128393
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526119285.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Medieval History
Chapter six traces the reform efforts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which eventually led to the consolidation of small independent hospitals into large civic institutions that became ...
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Chapter six traces the reform efforts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which eventually led to the consolidation of small independent hospitals into large civic institutions that became increasingly medicalized. Health boards created after the Black Death led to secularization of health care and poor relief. These social service institutions evolved over the early decades of the century and were a gradual response to the evolving needs and challenges of the population and the end of the communal era. This unification and institutionalization of civic oriented hospital care, resulted in one large Ospedale Maggiore, which was duplicated in towns and cities throughout Italy in the mid fifteenth century. It signified the end of the small, independent hospital movement that had so transformed the landscape of urban society earlier in the Middle Ages. The process of centralization that swept hospitals up in its wake was a universal feature of Italian state-formation in the age of the RenaissanceLess
Chapter six traces the reform efforts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which eventually led to the consolidation of small independent hospitals into large civic institutions that became increasingly medicalized. Health boards created after the Black Death led to secularization of health care and poor relief. These social service institutions evolved over the early decades of the century and were a gradual response to the evolving needs and challenges of the population and the end of the communal era. This unification and institutionalization of civic oriented hospital care, resulted in one large Ospedale Maggiore, which was duplicated in towns and cities throughout Italy in the mid fifteenth century. It signified the end of the small, independent hospital movement that had so transformed the landscape of urban society earlier in the Middle Ages. The process of centralization that swept hospitals up in its wake was a universal feature of Italian state-formation in the age of the Renaissance
Heather R. Perry
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719089244
- eISBN:
- 9781781707982
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719089244.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Opening with a description of the wounds soldiers received in the First World War, the introduction offers readers an overview of the significance of medicine to modern warfare. A brief review of ...
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Opening with a description of the wounds soldiers received in the First World War, the introduction offers readers an overview of the significance of medicine to modern warfare. A brief review of the new military weapons and tactics deployed between 1914 and 1918 outlines how and why these developments resulted in unprecedented casualties and why the German Army was so unprepared for them. Next the introduction reviews the historiography of medicine in the First World War, while also pointing to the paucity of studies which examine this phenomenon in Germany. After elaborating upon why an academic study of the role of medicine in WWI Germany remains to be written and why historians of both war and medicine should be interested in such a study, the introduction then outlines how this book addresses this scholarly lacuna while also contributing to larger debates among historians of medicine. Lastly this section introduces and defines key concepts to the study, including terms such as militarization, medicalization, and specialization.Less
Opening with a description of the wounds soldiers received in the First World War, the introduction offers readers an overview of the significance of medicine to modern warfare. A brief review of the new military weapons and tactics deployed between 1914 and 1918 outlines how and why these developments resulted in unprecedented casualties and why the German Army was so unprepared for them. Next the introduction reviews the historiography of medicine in the First World War, while also pointing to the paucity of studies which examine this phenomenon in Germany. After elaborating upon why an academic study of the role of medicine in WWI Germany remains to be written and why historians of both war and medicine should be interested in such a study, the introduction then outlines how this book addresses this scholarly lacuna while also contributing to larger debates among historians of medicine. Lastly this section introduces and defines key concepts to the study, including terms such as militarization, medicalization, and specialization.
Heather R. Perry
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719089244
- eISBN:
- 9781781707982
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719089244.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The conclusion outlines how the medical and social developments driven by the war had important long-term consequences for various segments of German society: orthopaedists, university medical ...
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The conclusion outlines how the medical and social developments driven by the war had important long-term consequences for various segments of German society: orthopaedists, university medical departments, disabled veterans, and disabled soldiers. It demonstrates how the specialization of orthopaedics in Germany differed in important ways from its specialization in other Western nations and points out how and why this was fundamentally tied to their war-time service.The conclusion also examines the consequences of war-time developments in orthopaedics for disabled civilians in Germany after the war. Finally, the conclusion makes broader historiographical points for historians of war and historians of medicine, and demonstrates how important developments in medicine, medical science, and medical technology were for the “management of modern warfare” in the German Empire from 1914 through 1918.Less
The conclusion outlines how the medical and social developments driven by the war had important long-term consequences for various segments of German society: orthopaedists, university medical departments, disabled veterans, and disabled soldiers. It demonstrates how the specialization of orthopaedics in Germany differed in important ways from its specialization in other Western nations and points out how and why this was fundamentally tied to their war-time service.The conclusion also examines the consequences of war-time developments in orthopaedics for disabled civilians in Germany after the war. Finally, the conclusion makes broader historiographical points for historians of war and historians of medicine, and demonstrates how important developments in medicine, medical science, and medical technology were for the “management of modern warfare” in the German Empire from 1914 through 1918.
Thomas Dodman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226492803
- eISBN:
- 9780226493138
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226493138.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
Nostalgia became a thing in the Age of Enlightenment, in the writings and actions of physicians and philosophes who heard about this mysterious Swiss illness. Across Europe and the North Atlantic, ...
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Nostalgia became a thing in the Age of Enlightenment, in the writings and actions of physicians and philosophes who heard about this mysterious Swiss illness. Across Europe and the North Atlantic, medical faculties debated the merits of medicalizing homesickness, outlining two competing explanations for the disease: a materialistic and deterministic one focused on environmental (atmospheric) constraints and organic transformations; and a psychological one that instead insisted on the emotional consequences of displacement and social disruption. By the end of the eighteenth century, others including the likes of Rousseau and Kant began talking of nostalgia in more benign terms as well, outlining aesthetic concerns and forms of interiority typical of a nascent romantic sensibility. But it was in the rather more prosaic medical practice and professional logics of military medicine that nostalgia truly came into its own, as French army surgeons in particular embraced the diagnosis in their battle to save soldiers’ lives and assert their own professional status.Less
Nostalgia became a thing in the Age of Enlightenment, in the writings and actions of physicians and philosophes who heard about this mysterious Swiss illness. Across Europe and the North Atlantic, medical faculties debated the merits of medicalizing homesickness, outlining two competing explanations for the disease: a materialistic and deterministic one focused on environmental (atmospheric) constraints and organic transformations; and a psychological one that instead insisted on the emotional consequences of displacement and social disruption. By the end of the eighteenth century, others including the likes of Rousseau and Kant began talking of nostalgia in more benign terms as well, outlining aesthetic concerns and forms of interiority typical of a nascent romantic sensibility. But it was in the rather more prosaic medical practice and professional logics of military medicine that nostalgia truly came into its own, as French army surgeons in particular embraced the diagnosis in their battle to save soldiers’ lives and assert their own professional status.
Howard Chiang
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719096006
- eISBN:
- 9781781708460
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096006.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter introduces the volume by situating historical epistemology in its proper intellectual and cultural genealogy (from the late nineteenth century to the present), by arguing for the ...
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This chapter introduces the volume by situating historical epistemology in its proper intellectual and cultural genealogy (from the late nineteenth century to the present), by arguing for the usefulness of historical epistemology to move beyond the limitation of the medicalization thesis, and by providing an overview of the book and delineating a history of the objects, authority, and existence of modern Chinese medicine that connects the broader social forces and challenges of globalization to the internal epistemic formations of East Asian medical knowledge.Less
This chapter introduces the volume by situating historical epistemology in its proper intellectual and cultural genealogy (from the late nineteenth century to the present), by arguing for the usefulness of historical epistemology to move beyond the limitation of the medicalization thesis, and by providing an overview of the book and delineating a history of the objects, authority, and existence of modern Chinese medicine that connects the broader social forces and challenges of globalization to the internal epistemic formations of East Asian medical knowledge.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0010
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Counter to many expectations that we would adopt a 24 hour society, I discuss herein the ways that the American work day has remained steadfastly diurnal and the various global and local ...
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Counter to many expectations that we would adopt a 24 hour society, I discuss herein the ways that the American work day has remained steadfastly diurnal and the various global and local coordinations that have occurred to allow this – including workplace napping.Less
Counter to many expectations that we would adopt a 24 hour society, I discuss herein the ways that the American work day has remained steadfastly diurnal and the various global and local coordinations that have occurred to allow this – including workplace napping.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0011
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter focuses on contemporary politics around time and its use in American society; I focus primarily on the Take Back Your Time movement and the rearrangement of school start times to allow ...
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This chapter focuses on contemporary politics around time and its use in American society; I focus primarily on the Take Back Your Time movement and the rearrangement of school start times to allow students to get more sleep throughout the school week.Less
This chapter focuses on contemporary politics around time and its use in American society; I focus primarily on the Take Back Your Time movement and the rearrangement of school start times to allow students to get more sleep throughout the school week.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0012
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter traces the history of the use of the sleepwalking defense in the U.S. and its roots in conceptions of desire and nature. I follow this discussion by focusing on the invention of drowsy ...
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This chapter traces the history of the use of the sleepwalking defense in the U.S. and its roots in conceptions of desire and nature. I follow this discussion by focusing on the invention of drowsy driving laws at the turn of the 21st century, laws that explicitly recognize the effects associated with ongoing sleep deprivation.Less
This chapter traces the history of the use of the sleepwalking defense in the U.S. and its roots in conceptions of desire and nature. I follow this discussion by focusing on the invention of drowsy driving laws at the turn of the 21st century, laws that explicitly recognize the effects associated with ongoing sleep deprivation.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0013
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter takes the concerns of how sleep makes us human into stranger realms – extreme sports, military research, and adventurous science. At once, the very basis of sleep is being tested in ...
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This chapter takes the concerns of how sleep makes us human into stranger realms – extreme sports, military research, and adventurous science. At once, the very basis of sleep is being tested in these situations, while sleep’s potentialities are being isolated.Less
This chapter takes the concerns of how sleep makes us human into stranger realms – extreme sports, military research, and adventurous science. At once, the very basis of sleep is being tested in these situations, while sleep’s potentialities are being isolated.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0014
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
What compels us to want to not sleep? I introduce cases of perpetual sleeplessness to challenge this imagined posthuman future of sleep, attempts to break records to stay awake, science fictional ...
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What compels us to want to not sleep? I introduce cases of perpetual sleeplessness to challenge this imagined posthuman future of sleep, attempts to break records to stay awake, science fictional representations of experiments to eradicate sleep, and scientific attempts to reduce or dramatically alter our sleep.Less
What compels us to want to not sleep? I introduce cases of perpetual sleeplessness to challenge this imagined posthuman future of sleep, attempts to break records to stay awake, science fictional representations of experiments to eradicate sleep, and scientific attempts to reduce or dramatically alter our sleep.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Dominant conceptions of sleep have changed over time, and so have American understandings of the normal, the ideal, the disorderly, and pathological. These changes are the result of scientific, ...
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Dominant conceptions of sleep have changed over time, and so have American understandings of the normal, the ideal, the disorderly, and pathological. These changes are the result of scientific, medical, and popular forces: the identification of circadian rhythms that govern feelings of alertness and sleepiness, the nosological definition of various pathological forms of sleep, and commercial and media representations of sleep have all collaborated in altering how sleep is conceived. These are all changes that have occurred since the 1880s and been dependent upon social formations and cultural expectations from early colonial America through the Industrial Revolution. How Americans sleep now is tied to these historical forces and human physiology.Less
Dominant conceptions of sleep have changed over time, and so have American understandings of the normal, the ideal, the disorderly, and pathological. These changes are the result of scientific, medical, and popular forces: the identification of circadian rhythms that govern feelings of alertness and sleepiness, the nosological definition of various pathological forms of sleep, and commercial and media representations of sleep have all collaborated in altering how sleep is conceived. These are all changes that have occurred since the 1880s and been dependent upon social formations and cultural expectations from early colonial America through the Industrial Revolution. How Americans sleep now is tied to these historical forces and human physiology.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
I begin by describing the contemporary situation of sleep medicine – its rise since the 1970s and the forces behind it. I also describe the sleep clinic where I conducted my fieldwork. I argue that ...
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I begin by describing the contemporary situation of sleep medicine – its rise since the 1970s and the forces behind it. I also describe the sleep clinic where I conducted my fieldwork. I argue that the basis for sleep medicine – and American medicine generally – is not knowledge, but doubt.Less
I begin by describing the contemporary situation of sleep medicine – its rise since the 1970s and the forces behind it. I also describe the sleep clinic where I conducted my fieldwork. I argue that the basis for sleep medicine – and American medicine generally – is not knowledge, but doubt.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
I trace discussions of sleep from early colonial America through the scientific efforts in the first half of the 20th century, focused on American idioms of sleep – which highlight concerns with ...
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I trace discussions of sleep from early colonial America through the scientific efforts in the first half of the 20th century, focused on American idioms of sleep – which highlight concerns with efficiency and productivity. That sleep is known through its metaphors compounds the doubts that motivate clinical practice.Less
I trace discussions of sleep from early colonial America through the scientific efforts in the first half of the 20th century, focused on American idioms of sleep – which highlight concerns with efficiency and productivity. That sleep is known through its metaphors compounds the doubts that motivate clinical practice.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0004
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Based on the contemporary sleep clinic, I focus on the roles of doubt and certainty in medical practice, particularly in a series of cases presented by physicians to other physicians and the ...
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Based on the contemporary sleep clinic, I focus on the roles of doubt and certainty in medical practice, particularly in a series of cases presented by physicians to other physicians and the discussions that ensue, as well as media focused on the promotion of sleep as an explanatory device for understanding individual and social disorder.Less
Based on the contemporary sleep clinic, I focus on the roles of doubt and certainty in medical practice, particularly in a series of cases presented by physicians to other physicians and the discussions that ensue, as well as media focused on the promotion of sleep as an explanatory device for understanding individual and social disorder.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674749
- eISBN:
- 9781452947341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674749.003.0005
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter focuses on the experiences of disordered sleepers and their families, and I present a series of cases of individuals and families who identify as specific kinds of disordered sleepers – ...
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This chapter focuses on the experiences of disordered sleepers and their families, and I present a series of cases of individuals and families who identify as specific kinds of disordered sleepers – narcoleptics, insomniacs, sleep apnics, and so on, to discuss the emergence of new desires for sleep.Less
This chapter focuses on the experiences of disordered sleepers and their families, and I present a series of cases of individuals and families who identify as specific kinds of disordered sleepers – narcoleptics, insomniacs, sleep apnics, and so on, to discuss the emergence of new desires for sleep.
