Axis Volume 8 |
||
|
|
||
| Ask a question about this product | ||
Works of Illness: Narrative, Picturing and the Social Response to Serious Disease by Alan RadleyOctober 2009 Paperback, 242pp, £13.95 Works of Illness takes a fresh look at illness by examining the role of artworks in the understanding of and response to serious disease. The special contribution of this book is to focus upon pictures, narratives and dramatic performance as ways of giving shape to illness experience, communicating this to others, and influencing social action in order to mitigate suffering. It shows how the aesthetic dimension of such representations is key to understanding the relationship of the world of illness to that of health. Works of Illness is an original interdisciplinary study that draws upon medical sociology, the philosophy of art, and discussions of ethics to offer a new theory of how serious illness is made social. Alan Radley is Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University, UK. He is Founding Editor of the journal health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine. Click here to buy this book from Amazon |
||
Bookmark
Email This
...
written by Rita Charon, Professor of Clinical Medicine, Columbia University, New York. , August 12, 2009 This boundary-defying book is complex and learned while modest and compassionate. The breath-taking range of this pioneering book reaches and therefore unifies social science, phenomenology, aesthetics, literary art, and suffering ‘borne.’ It becomes instantly canonical, benefiting all who are ill and all who care for them.
...
written by Brian Hurwitz – Professor of Medicine and the Arts, King’s College London , August 12, 2009 Works of Illness is a profoundly illuminating consideration of the sociology and poetics of portrayals of illnesses borne. Alan Radley deftly brings sociological, aesthetic and philosophical approaches together in a sustained analysis that deepens and strengthens our appreciation and understanding of the many faces of serious illness. Writing with clarity and lightness of touch, this work sets new standards and moves the limits of our comprehensibility of representations of illness—a landmark contribution to the Medical Humanities.
...
written by David B. Morris – Emeritus Professor of English, University of Virginia , August 12, 2009 In this book Alan Radley pioneers a twenty-first century aesthetics of illness as original and perceptive as Susan Sontag’s twentieth-century metaphorics of illness. He shows how living with serious illness positions us inescapably within a material realm where beauty and horror can be as important, if not always as potent, as microbes. A must-read for medical sociologists and health professionals, as well as for anyone concerned to understand the twilight territory of patients and caregivers.
...
written by Catherine Kohler Riessman – Research Professor, Dept. of Sociology, Boston College , August 12, 2009 A stunning book that invites us all to re-imagine illness. By interrogating images and stories composed by ill people, Radley shows the work they do for social change and for narrative theory. Readers can engage with suffering in new ways - bearing witness rather than fleeing. Scholarly work on the experience of health and illness will never be the same. Write review |
||
