Login

Medicating race : heart disease and durable preoccupations with difference

Show simple item record

dc.contributor.advisor David S. Jones. en_US
dc.contributor.author Pollock, Anne, Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology en_US
dc.contributor.other Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Science, Technology and Society. en_US
dc.date.accessioned 2007-11-16T14:28:26Z
dc.date.available 2007-11-16T14:28:26Z
dc.date.copyright 2007 en_US
dc.date.issued 2007 en_US
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39579
dc.description Thesis (Ph. D. in History and Social Study of Science and Technology (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2007. en_US
dc.description Includes bibliographical references (p. 320-350). en_US
dc.description.abstract This dissertation is an examination of intersections of race, pharmaceuticals, and heart disease over the course of the 20th century and today. Each of these parts has had a dynamic history, and when they are invoked together they provide a terrain for arguments about interventions in health and in justice in the present. An enduring aspect of discourses of heart disease over the past century has been articulating connections between characterizations of the modem American way of life and of heart disease. In that process, heart disease research and practice has participated in differentiating Americans, especially by race. This dissertation uses heart disease categories and the drugs prescribed for them as windows into racialized medicine. The chapters are organized in a way that is roughly chronological, beginning with the emergence of cardiology as a specialty just before World War II and the landmark longitudinal Framingham Heart Study that began shortly thereafter. A central chapter tracks the emergence and mobilization of African American hypertension as a disease category since the 1960s. en_US
dc.description.abstract (cont.) Two final chapters attend to current racial invocations of two pharmaceuticals: thiazide and BiDil. Using methods from critical historiography of race, anthropology, and science studies, this thesis provides an account of race in medicine with interdisciplinary relevance. By attending to continuities and discontinuities over the period, this thesis illustrates that race in heart disease research and practice has been a durable preoccupation. Racialized medicine has used epistemologically eclectic notions of race, drawing variously on heterogeneous aspects that are both material and semiotic. This underlying ambiguity is central to the productivity of the recorded category of race. American practices of medicating race have also been mediating it, arbitrating and intervening on new and renewed articulations of inclusion and difference in democratic and racialized American ways of life. en_US
dc.description.provenance Made available in DSpace on 2007-11-16T14:28:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 174291505.pdf: 22884879 bytes, checksum: 68135fe03fac04f339bc4af9bf1c90ec (MD5) 174291505-MIT.pdf: 22884664 bytes, checksum: a25971900d8c2ed5705473d2facc60a8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007 en
dc.description.statementofresponsibility by Anne Pollock. en_US
dc.format.extent 350 p. en_US
dc.language.iso eng en_US
dc.publisher Massachusetts Institute of Technology en_US
dc.rights M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission. en_US
dc.rights.uri http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582
dc.subject Program in Science, Technology and Society. en_US
dc.title Medicating race : heart disease and durable preoccupations with difference en_US
dc.type Thesis en_US
dc.description.degree Ph.D.in History and Social Study of Science and Technology (HASTS en_US
dc.contributor.department Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Science, Technology and Society. en_US
dc.identifier.oclc 174291505 en_US

Files in this item

Files Size Format
Preview, non-printable (open to all) 22.88Mb application/pdf
Full printable version (MIT only) 22.88Mb application/pdf

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record

Search DSpace@MIT


Advanced Search

Browse

My Account

Links