ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Diagnosing Difference in Biomedicine

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

In this session, we utilize scientific acts of diagnosis as a lens for examining how scientific communities define and contest categories and standards, such as the categorization of embodied risk with personal health devicies, sexual difference in ambiguous individuals, and eugenic norms for human development. Sloane Wesloh begins by examining the history of personal health devices in the late 20th century, arguing that the development of wearable technologies, like continuous glucose monitors, contributed to the creation of risk as a consumer product. Second, Kyra Solomon considers how early twentieth-century debates over sex classification in the United States reveal the mobilization of speculative biological theories by physicians seeking to justify thier diagnosis of sex in patients whose bodies challenged existing scientific norms. Finally, Rose Gatfield-Jeffries investigates the categories promoted by the Plunket Society in Aotearoa New Zealand, demonstrating how Dr. Truby King’s developmental metrics and infant-care regimes translated eugenic ideology into scientific-seeming standards of postnatal care. Together, these papers show how practices of diagnosising difference produced and legitimized scientific categories, illuminating the epistemic and political commitments that have shaped scientific judgments across diverse historical contexts.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Michael Dietrich, University of Pittsburgh

Individual Presentations

• The History of the Personal Health Device and the Making of Chronic Disease - Sloane Wesloh, University of Pittsburgh

• Diagnosis and postnatal care: The Plunket Society, Dr Truby King, and eugenic ideology in early twentieth century Aotearoa New Zealand - Rose Gatfield-Jeffries, University of Pittsburgh

Session Organizer

• Sloane Wesloh, University of Pittsburgh