Stakeholding and social construction in medicine
Social Constructivism about disease is often thought to have little practical significance, and thus little relevance for clinicians; it is a theory about how our categories and classifications of disease are constructed, rather than about disease conditions themselves and their prognoses.
In this talk, however, I challenge that distinction by looking at some interesting phenomena concerning, on the one hand, self-diagnosis of medical conditions, and on the other hand functional neurological (ie "psychosomatic") disorders. What becomes clear is that in at least some such cases - and plausibly in many more - the sort of public values, practices, and structures which constructivists believe determine classificatory practices and outcomes turn out to determine the symptoms and course of diseases too. And we should therefore expect that interventions in public discourse will have implications for therapeutic outcomes.
Biography on Shane N. Glackin
Shane is Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter. His research work is primarily concerned with the so-called "fact-value distinction"; in particular the interaction between evaluative claims about human well-being and scientific claims about human biology in the philosophy of medicine, and in the evolution of human normative institutions such as public language. More generally, his concern is with the way that the ethical, political, and legal value-claims typical of modern liberal democracies shape and respond to the findings of biological, medical, and other sciences.
Registration
If you want to watch/listen to this SHEtalk on Zoom, please register here.
What are SHEtalks
SHEtalks are a serial of informal research seminars held at Center for Sustainable Healthcare Education, University of Oslo. SHEtalks are research lunch lectures. The fall 2023 program was put together by researcher Gabriela Saldanha. Seminars take place at Thursdays at noon (GTM+1) unless otherwise specified. They may be delivered and attended in person or via zoom.