Embodied Clinical Prospective Action and Decision Making: A Pragmatist Perspective

• In Event: 3184 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 01. Culture, Cognition, and the Body

Abstract

Drawing on a 30-month ethnography of hospital cardiology, I discuss the role of the physician’s body in clinical prospective action and decision making. Against the background of a high-tech, cognitively-distributed work environment, I focus on four embodiment processes of medical expertise and authority: (1) the technological augmentation of clinical decision making and treatment; (2) the body work of human anatomy visualization; (3) the development and practice of technical and surgical skills; and (4) the sensorial compounding of distributed clinical evaluations. Taken together, these processes illuminate the indispensable corporeality of medical decision making and expertise. What is more, they help clarify how prospection drives cognitive action in an expertise domain ostensibly averse to prognosis.

Author

• Phaedra Daipha, Allstate