Con-forming bodies : the interplay of machines and bodies and the implications of agency in medical imaging

Wood, Lisa (2016) Con-forming bodies : the interplay of machines and bodies and the implications of agency in medical imaging. Sociology of Health and Illness, 38 (5). pp. 768-781. ISSN 0141-9889

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Abstract

In attending to the material discursive constructions of the patient body within cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) imaging in radiotherapy treatments, in this paper I describe how bodies and machines co-create images. Using an analytical framework inspired by Science and Technology Studies and Feminist Technoscience, I describe the interplay between machines and bodies and the implications of materialities and agency. I argue that patients’ bodies play a part in producing scans within acceptable limits of machines as set out through organisational arrangements. In doing so I argue that bodies are fabricated into the order of work prescribed and embedded within and around the CBCT system, becoming, not only the subject of resulting images, but part of that image. The scan is not therefore a representation of a passive subject (a body) but co-produced by the work of practitioners and patients who actively control (and contort) and discipline their body according to protocols and instructions and the CBCT system. In this way I suggest they are ‘con-forming’ the CBCT image.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Sociology of Health and Illness
Additional Information:
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Wood, L. A. (2016), Con-forming bodies: the interplay of machines and bodies and the implications of agency in medical imaging. Sociology of Health & Illness, 38: 768–781. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.12389 which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9566.12389/abstract This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3306
Subjects:
?? allied health professionsbodyethnographymen's healthsts (science and technology studies)health(social science)public health, environmental and occupational healthhealth policy ??
ID Code:
75936
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
21 Oct 2015 05:02
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
07 Feb 2024 00:44