Overview

From angiotensin to cortisol, testosterone to xenoestrogens, and dopamine to endocrine disruptors, hormones are everywhere. These chemical entities are foundational to biological life and shape social, cultural, and political forces, while simultaneously being shaped by them. Hormones are increasingly central not only to medical and other body-shaping practices and contemporary science, but also environmentally-oriented conversations. Throughout Hormonal Theory, authors trace how biomedical, social, political, and experiential forces entangle to produce hormones as we know them today. It illuminates how hormones emerge and exist as complex entities that permeate every sphere of our lives. Each glossary entry takes a particular hormonal compound as its starting point, yet works to elaborate and complicate understandings of hormones as distinct biological or chemical entities. The entries collectively show how hormones never operate in isolation from other hormones, nor bodies in isolation from other human and non-human bodies and their socio-ecological surroundings. Indeed, they “cascade” into one another. This volume, then, is not simply a qualitatively-rich companion to medical knowledge about hormones, but a challenge to the conceptual underpinnings of current dominant understandings of disease, wellness, and normalcy.

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9781350322998

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Reviews

Hormonal Theory is a long-awaited and much-needed contribution to the meaning and significance of hormones. An elegant combination of theorization and meticulous case studies, this glossary moves beyond prevailing biomedical understanding of hormones as signaling molecules or chemical messengers to show how they are co-constituted between the biological, environmental, cultural, and social. This outstanding book will unsettle our very understanding of what hormones are. * Katrina Karkazis, Professor of Sexuality, Women’s & Gender Studies, Amherst College, USA * Hormonal Theory throws one into the murky waters of ‘hormones’, demonstrating the impossibility of disentangling the concept of a hormone from the relations, bio-social configurations, and affects that produce it. The book’s playful appropriation of the medical glossary format deftly hints at the serious political impetus behind its powerful insights. * Ericka Johnson, Professor of Gender and Society, Linköping University, Sweden * This book is a treasure chest of insights. Accessible and erudite, the essays show how hormones are a means through which social and political relations become instantiated in biology. Hormonal Theory is an indispensable read for anyone interested in how bodies are entangled in political and epistemic regimes. * Samantha Frost, Professor, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA *

Author Information

Sonja Erikainen is Research Fellow at the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society, Usher Institute, The University of Edinburgh, UK. Andrea Ford is Research Fellow at the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society, Usher Institute, The University of Edinburgh, UK. Rosalyn Malcolm is Assistant Professor in Anthropology at Durham University, UK. Lisa Raeder is a qualitative researcher and PhD candidate at the Centre for Biomedicine, Self, and Society at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Celia Roberts is Professor of Gender and Women's Studies, Australian National University, Australia.

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