Rebirth of the Clinic

<div>From physical location to payment processes to expectations of both patients and caregivers nearly everything surrounding the contemporary medical clinic's central activity has changed since Michel Foucualt's <i>Birth of the Clinic</i>. Indebted to that work but recognizing the gap between what the modern clinic hoped to be and what it has become <i>Rebirth of the Clinic</i> explores medical practices that shed light on the fraught relationship between medical systems practitioners and patients.</div> <div><br> Combining theory history and ethnography the contributors to this volume ground today's clinic in a larger scheme of power relations identifying the cultural political and economic pressures that frame clinical relationships including the instrumentalist definition of health actuarial-based medical practices and patient self-help movements which simultaneously hem in and create the conditions under which agents creatively change ideas of illness and treatment.</div> <div><br> From threatened community health centers in poor African American locales to innovative nursing practices among the marginally housed citizens of Canada's poorest urban neighborhood this volume addresses not just the who what where and how of place-specific clinical practices but also sets these local experiences against a theoretical backdrop that links them to the power of modern medicine in shaping fundamental life experiences.<br>  </div> <div>Contributors: Christine Ceci U of Alberta; Lisa Diedrich Stony Brook U; Suzanne Fraser Monash U; John Liesch Simon Fraser U; Jenna Loyd CUNY; Annemarie Mol U of Amsterdam; Mary Ellen Purkis U of Victoria.</div>