Author: S. Scott Graham File Type: pdf Chronic pain is a medical mystery, debilitating to patients and a source of frustration for practitioners. It often eludes both cause and cure and serves as a reminder of how much further we have to go in unlocking the secrets of the body. A new field of pain medicine has evolved from this landscape, one that intersects with dozens of disciplines and subspecialties ranging from psychology and physiology to anesthesia and chiropractic medicine. Over the past three decades, researchers, policy makers, and practitioners have struggled to define this complex and often contentious field as they work to establish standards while navigating some of the most challenging philosophical issues of Western science. In The Politics of Pain Medicine A Rhetorical-Ontological Inquiry, S. Scott Graham offers a rich and detailed exploration of the medical rhetoric surrounding pain medicine. Graham chronicles the work of interdisciplinary pain management specialists to found a new science of pain and a new approach to pain medicine grounded in a more comprehensive biospychosocial model. His insightful analysis demonstrates how these materials ultimately shape the healthcare communitys understanding of what pain medicine is, how the medicine should be practiced and regulated, and how practitioner-patient relationships are best managed. It is a fascinating, novel examination of one of the most vexing issues in contemporary medicine.**ReviewThe ancient rhetorical term kairos denotes the moment of opportunity for a particular sort of discursive intervention. Graham unfolds the synergy between a contemporary biopsychosocial model in pain science and the turn in critical theory to new materialism and ontology, exposing both modernist and postmodernist explanatory fallacies. With remarkable theoretical agility, he gives us a thoroughly kairotic, pleasingly generative, and importantly interdisciplinary, approach to a wicked problem human beings have been contending with forever.(Judy Z. Segal, University of British Columbia) Grahams The Politics of Pain Medicine is an exemplary integration of rhetorical studies, science and technology studies, and material ontologies of human being. With careful and textured analyses of research and medical efforts aimed at remediating the ineluctably interconnected biological, psychological, and social dimensions of pain, Graham both articulates and effects an ontological reorientation that has the potential to transform how theorists and practitioners think about pain, talk about pain, and respond to pain in others.(Samantha Frost, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) The Politics of Pain Medicine, as a title, understates the comprehensive coverage of the complex topic of pain that can be found in this books pages. Especially striking is Grahams deconstruction of the history of pain research into a variety of strands, each of which corresponds to a distinct mode of relating to the phenomena of pain. Even scholars who do not share Grahams preoccupation with the role of rhetoric in the study of science and technology will come away with a more sophisticated understanding of why pain has been such a controversial and revealing site in the politics of medical practice. Moreover, fully aware of the closeness of pain to our sense of human dignity, Graham concludes the book with a sober reflection on what difference he thinks his inquiry can make to the future of pain as bothan object of research and a personal experience.(Steve Fuller, University of Warwick) About the Author S. Scott Graham is the director of the Scientific and Medical Communications Laboratory and assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Author: Paul Paolucci File Type: pdf While Karl Marxs ideas remain influential in the social sciences, there is considerable disagreement and debate on the methodological principles that inform his work. Marx often aligned himself with both scientific and dialectical principles, at least once referring to his method as a scientific dialectic, suggesting he believed dialectical reason could be incorporated into scientific method. By debunking several misconceptions about Marxs work and examining how he brought scientific methods to bear on his general sociological thinking, his materialist historical perspective, and within his political economy, this book brings new insight to the methodological principles that animate Marxs writings. What emerges from such a perspective is an approach to sociological inquiry that remains vital and useful for contemporary research on capitalist society and its possible futures.