Recovering the Nation's Body: Cultural Memory, Medicine, and the Politics of Redemption / Edition 1

by Linda F. Hogle

Overview

The body is both a site for medical practice and a source of therapeutic and scientific tools. As such, there are a variety of meanings ascribed to the body which both affect and are affected by cultural, economic, political and legal complexities. In order to access and use body parts, Linda F. Hogle states, transformative scientific and  cultural processes are brought into play. Nowhere is this more evident than present-day Germany, where the spectre of Nazi medical experimentation still plays a large role  in national policies governing the use of body parts and the way these policies are put into practice.  In their efforts to be perceived as not repeating atrocities of the past, German medical practitioners and policy-makers reformulate ideas of bodily violation.  To further confuse the issue, the reunification of East and West Germany has engendered new questions about the relationship between individuals’ bodies, science, and the state.

Hogle shows how “universal” medicine is reinterpreted through the lens of national and transnational politics and history, using comparative examples from her research in the United. States.  Recovering the Nation’s Body is the first book to analyze the actual practices involved in procuring human tissue, and the first to examine how the German past and the unique present-day situation within the European Union are key in understanding the form that medical practices take within various contexts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813526454
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	09/01/1999
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	262
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Linda F. Hogle is a fellow at the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics. She has written widely on the anthropology of science and on bioethics and cultural diversity. 

Table of Contents

Introduction : situating medical practices
Animation and regeneration : the meaning of death and the use of body materials in history
Embodying national identity : national socialism and the body
Culture, technology, and the law define the body
Bodies, sciences, and the state in the new Germany
Organizing the procurement and use of human materials
Local practice : coordinators and surgeons
Converting human materials into therapeutic tools
The right therapeutic tools
Conclusions : medicine and the politics of redemption

What People are Saying About This

Margaret Lock

In this provocative ethnography, Hogle reveals how the uses of human tissue and organs as therapeutic agents are intimately related not only to expanding arenas of commodification, but also to the politics of nationalism. A challenge to received wisdom about bodies and person.
— Margaret Lock, Author of Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America.

Sarah Franklin

This astonishing portrait of changing understanding of life and death is both profound and revolutionary. While extending classical debates about body parts as gifts and as commodities, it brilliantly transfigures them. Unparalleled in its field, this powerful book redefines the future of medical anthropology.
—Reader in Cultural Anthropology, Lancaster University (England).

Editorial Reviews

This astonishing portrait of changing understandings of life and death is both profound and revolutionary. While extending classical debates about body parts as gifts and as commodities, it brilliantly transfigures them. Unparalleled in its field, this powerful book redefines the future of medical anthropology.

Reader in Cultural Anthropology, Lancaster University - Sarah Franklin

A noteworthy contribution to our understanding of the cultural history of twentieth-century Germany.

German Studies Review

Analyzing the actual practices and the underlying cultural assumptions in procuring human body parts, Hogle (biomedical ethics, Stanford U.) examines how German practice seeks to distance modern doctors from the specter of Nazi medical experimentation, and how reunification has raised new questions about relationships between people's bodies, science, and the state. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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