Overview

Wild Science investigates the world-wide boom in 'health culture'. While self-help health books and medical dramas are popular around the globe, we are bombarded with daily media images of DNA research, and news reports about cloning, the fight against AIDS, cancer and depression. With popular culture now the principal means through which the non-scientific population encounters science why do certain images of science get promoted above others? Contributors examine the public meanings of science, revealing the frictions and contradictions within popular representations of what medicine can and should do. Focusing on the visual culture of medicine, they show how representations of science have a direct impact on popular perceptions of the limits of science, and ultimately on health education, funding and research, and examine the belief that media literacy in popular representations of medicine makes an ethical public discourse on the aims of science possible. With sections addressing the new visual technologies which make the human body into a virtual territory, the diagnostic and medical practices centered around women's bodies, and popular debates around genetics and identity, Wild Science argues that science is a practice bound in values and institutions, and argues for a responsible engagement with the public cultures of science and health. Anne Balsamo, Anne Beaulieu, University of Amsterdam, Holland Kathy Davis, University of Utrecht, Netherlands Lisa Cartwright, University of Rochester, New York Jose Van

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9780415204309

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With an emphasis on historically and empirically grounded research, this collection of fourteen original essays offers sophisticated analyses of the intersections between feminism, medicine, and the media, and effectively argues that science and biotechnology may have a rightful place in cultural studies.. <br>-Topia, Fall 2001. <br> Here is a solidly researched feminist investigation of modern medicine in North America. It will no doubt become a part of the science and culture curricula and help to foster greater public discourse on health care policy, biotechnology, and the role of the media.. <br>-Topia, Fall 2001 <br>

""With an emphasis on historically and empirically grounded research, this collection of fourteen original essays offers sophisticated analyses of the intersections between feminism, medicine, and the media, and effectively argues that science and biotechnology may have a rightful place in cultural studies.."" -Topia, Fall 2001. ""Here is a solidly researched feminist investigation of modern medicine in North America. It will no doubt become a part of the science and culture curricula and help to foster greater public discourse on health care policy, biotechnology, and the role of the media.."" -Topia, Fall 2001

Author Information

Janine Marchessault is Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Video, York University, Ontario. She is President of the Film Studies Association of Canada. Kim Sawchuk is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University, Montreal.

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