Medicine and the Body

by Simon J. Williams

`An intelligent and informed account of medical sociology. Simon Williams has produced an original and comprehensive sociological statement of the centrality of the body to an understanding of medicine, health and illness. His scope is impressive... It will shape future teaching and research in the field of health and illness′ - Bryan S Turner, Professor of Sociology, University of Cambridge This is a clear, well-written account of medicine, health and the body. Taking recent debates on the body and society as its point of departure, the book critically reexamines a series of embodied issues and emotional agendas in health and illness. Included here are cutting edge discussions and debates - the medicalized body - health inequalities - childhood and ageing - the dilemmas of high-tech medicine - chronic illness and disability - caring and (bio)ethics - sleep, death and dying - the body in late/postmodernity Written in an accessible, engaging style, with many original and innovative insights, the book will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students alike, and to researchers and lecturers with an interest in the embodied agendas of health and medicine in the new millennium.

264 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Simon Johnson Williams joined the Department of Sociology at Warwick in 1992, becoming a full Professor in 2006. Prior to that he was a Research Fellow in the Centre for Health Services Studies (CHSS) at the University of Kent (1990-1992) after successfully completing his doctoral studies at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, in 1990.

Simon is a passionate teacher and researcher with strong conviction in the enduring power and promise of the social and political sciences in a complex, changing world. He is also strongly committed to interdisciplinary conversations, particularly those of a biosocial and biopolitical kind, and to wider engagements with diverse audiences and publics, including media profiling of his work.

Simon has served on the editorial boards of a number of key international journals in his field (such as Sociology of Health & Illness; Health; Social Theory & Health). He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).

Simon's research to date falls into the following interrelated areas of social and political science pertaining to: the body, health and society; bioscience, biomedicine, biopolitics; (new) media, culture and everyday/night life, including new digital forms of self-tracking and the sharing of such data on social media, particularly sleep data. He also has longstanding interests in social theory (particularly realist social theory, relational sociology, psychoanalytically informed social theory, and biologically minded social theory) and newly emerging interests in the challenges and complexities of big data.

He has been notably active in recent years, as an outgrowth of his previous interests in body matters, in developing with colleagues social and interdisciplinary research agendas regarding sleep and society, including an early agenda-setting ESRC 'Sleep and Society' seminar series and other recent discussions and reflections on sleep matters and the politics of sleep in Somatosphere, the RSA journal and Discover Society. This in turn has been augmented through other interrelated strands of research (some early, others now well established) on the sociology and politics of pharmaceuticals; mental health and illness; biomedical enhancements and 'biohacking'; new forms of monitoring, measuring, managing and optimising ourselves in the digital age and the big data era, and most recently of all, the social, cultural and political dimensions of chronobiology in society.

Research awards to date include grants (as PI or CI) from funding bodies such as the ESRC, the British Academy and the NHS Executive, as well as the co-supervision of a number of successfully completed ESRC doctoral studentships and a co-funded Warwick-Coeliac UK studentship. Recent projects for example, include a collaborative (Royal Holloway, Warwick, King's College London) ESRC funded study of Medicated Sleep and Wakefulnes: A Social Scienfitic Investigation of Stakeholder Interests, Policies and Practices and a Wellcome seed fund project (with colleagues at Surrey and Royal Holloway) on 'Social Media and Sleep: Ethical Agendas in the Digital Age' which has just ended. Other new collaborative research bids are currently in the early stages of discussion and development on (i) Chronobiology in Society and (ii) Sleep and Transhumanism.