“Stethoscope” shortlisted for FSHI Book Prize

Annually, the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness (FSHI) awards a book prize of £1,000 to “the book making the most significant contribution to medical sociology/sociology of health and illness” (British Sociological Association). This year, Anna Harris and Tom Rice have been shortlisted for the 2024 prize for their book Stethoscope: The Making of a Medical Icon.

Stethoscope (2022) is an investigation of the iconic scientific instrument, exploring its history and future as well as illustrating the various roles it has played over time. You can find the book on the publisher’s website here.

John Nott and Anna Harris received the Amsterdamska award for their edited collection Making Sense of Medicine: Material Culture and the Reproduction of Medical Knowledge, published by Intellect Books in 2022. This award is given for significant creative collaborations in an edited book or special issue in the broad field of science and technology studies.

The book explores the role of materiality in the training of doctors and medical knowledge reproduction in general. The jury praised the collection for its “creative structure, with interconnected nodes that bear links to multiple topics and concepts surfacing in different materials and chapters” which sets it apart from more traditional edited collections.

Find the book here on the publisher’s website.

Recently, J.T.H. Connor has published a review in the Canadian Journal of Health History. Giving a comprehensive summary of the book, he writes about how “the book tackles fundamental issues related to the evolution of medical practice and the physician–patient encounter as seen through the cultural history of this particular medical instrument, allowing for discussion on the skill sets of doctors, communication between doctors and patients through talking and listening at the bedside, and possible threats to humane medicine resulting from increasingly sophisticated technology.” The review can be found here.

Fringe Editions showcases creative research and practice related to healthcare professions education. With origins in an ERC research project called Making Clinical Sense (2016-2023), Fringe Editions is a place to explore cutting edge approaches to research, inspiring transdisciplinary ideas and hands-on engagement with materials: the necessary ingredients for developing approaches to training healthcare professions for the future.

Visit the website to get impressions on the hands-on workshops, festivals, and children’s workshops we have facilitated, and for free resources like sensory cards and knitting patterns available under Downloads. We also want to use this space to amplify the work of others who are also creating, making, experimenting, so feel free to get in touch with us by email if you have a project or event you want to share (fringeeditions-fasos@maastrichtuniversity.nl). You can also subscribe to our newsletter by signing up at the bottom footer of the website to receive a quarterly-ish feed of great ideas and inspiration.

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When the anatomist Andreas Vesalius made his now famous atlas he was attempting to address a puzzle that continues to perplex those training doctors to this day: how to evoke the visceral, complex material nature of bodies, other than with flesh itself? In her Pub talk The untold story of imagination in medicine, Anna explored some of the wonderful and unusual ways in which educators teach medical students about inner anatomies.

The talk took place yesterday evening, on May 13 at Eetcafe de Preuverij.

Together with attendees, Anna explored different methodological approaches in-development for her project. She spoke about what it means to make ethnographic materials available to others (re-use) or to use the open data sets of others in one’s own work (recycling). Particularly relevant to her upcycling project, Anna tackled the question of how ethnographers can bring making methods, such as workshops or exhibitions, into their research projects.

 For ethnographers intending to employ open data sets or making methodologies in their work, the discussion was of much interest.