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Hidden places, uncommon persons.

Sharon R Kaufman1

  • 1Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine, Box 0646, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143-0646, USA. kaufman@itsa.ucsf.edu

Social Science & Medicine (1982)
|April 30, 2003
PubMed
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Specialized hospital units create new ways for technology-dependent individuals to exist. These units explore how consciousness, personhood, and embodiment are shaped by medical technology and place.

Area of Science:

  • Medical Sociology
  • Bioethics
  • Philosophy of Medicine

Background:

  • Emergence of specialized hospital units for technology-dependent individuals.
  • Technological advancements create new categories of existence between life and death.
  • Western philosophical tradition emphasizes consciousness as the essence of personhood.

Observation:

  • These units fabricate and complicate patient personhood through surveillance and maintenance.
  • The concept of personhood is challenged when consciousness is problematic.
  • Patients exist in a technologically produced border zone between life and death.

Findings:

  • Personhood is negotiated through inter-subjective knowledge of hospital staff.
  • Patient knowledge is tied to their situatedness within the hospital environment.

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  • Embodiment and self-knowledge are perceived as emplaced within social and spatial relations.

    • Implications:

    • Rethinking definitions of life, death, and personhood in the context of advanced medical care.
    • Understanding the social and spatial construction of identity for technology-dependent patients.
    • Exploring the ethical and philosophical challenges posed by technologically sustained existence.