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Biomedical Technologies

Anthropological Approaches

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology

  • 223 Accesses

Introduction

The history of technology1 has usually been transmitted in Europe and North America as an heroic tale about the conquest of the enemy, whether this be aspects of the human or natural worlds—a narrative of progress, and of the betterment of social life in general. This has been characterized as the Standard View of technology (Pfaffenbergger, 1992), one which assumes that necessity is the mother of invention, causing humans to produce tools, devices, and artifacts that permit us, we believe, increasingly rational, autonomous, and prosperous lives, liberated from the constraints imposed by individual biology, oppressive human enemies, and the environment.

It has been suggested that inherent to the Standard View are two sets of tacit meanings that at first glance appear to be contradictory. The first assumes that the relationship of humans to technology is too obvious to need examination. Organizations, industries, technicians, craftspeople, and so on simply make things that...

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Authors
  1. Margaret Lock
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Human Relations Area Files, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA

    Carol R. Ember  & Melvin Ember  & 

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© 2004 Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers

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Lock, M. (2004). Biomedical Technologies. In: Ember, C.R., Ember, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-29905-X_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-29905-X_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-306-47754-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-387-29905-1

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