Response
John Lyne
Observations
This volume is part of project that aspires to a fuller account of how the practical, scientific, and cultural dynamics of the healthscape discursively interact. In that project there are many points of entry and many interdisciplinary opportunities.
By pushing beyond the confines of institutional medicine and a narrowly construed definition of health, studies in rhetoric of health and medicine refresh the question of what comes next in expanding our understanding of these vital concerns.
Focus on rhetoric of health and medicine trains the eye on an interdisciplinary field that studies an enterprise toggling between science and practice and their embeddedness in culture.
Is “health” something that can be gauged only in contrast to what is normatively considered ”unhealthy”—bodily damage, affliction by disease, or otherwise lacking ”healthy” qualities, physical or mental? As medical technologies and scientific knowledge advance, will we continually raise the bar on what is required for “perfect health”? And if so, what would that be?
RHM approaches matters of health as depending on intersections of culture, access, science, and behavior. In what ways can citizens engage with specialists in matters of health and medicine?