Papers by Anna Mann
Quality of life has become a central value in the provision of healthcare for patients with chron... more Quality of life has become a central value in the provision of healthcare for patients with chronic conditions. This has engendered debates in critical medical sociology on the nonneutral effects that valuing health and illness, medical interventions, and health care delivery in terms of quality of life yield in health care policy, patients' daily lives, and clinical practices. Focusing on the case of nephrology, this paper presents qualitative data collected in Austria of two dialysis units in which nephrologists initiated projects aimed towards "the improvement of patients' quality of life." Whereas the first involved nurses supporting patients in the administration of peritoneal dialysis at home, the second implied the provision of treatment and care exclusively focused on a well-being 'in the here and now' to patients. By conceptualising physicians as actors within networks of relations and values enacted in practices, I analyse how in both dialysis units reference to quality of life enabled nephrologists to problematise the provision of standard haemodialysis treatment to multimorbid, elderly patients and to develop a new treatment protocol, and to interest and enrol others in the provision of healthcare according with this new protocol. Valuing medical interventions in terms of quality of life not only leads to a governmentalization of living and an economization of health. It also allows physicians to articulate a socio-medico-ethical problem-the availability of life-prolonging technologies for a growing population of elderly, multi-morbid patients-and develop solutions locally. What the solutions consist in may fundamentally differ, however.
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How can critique in responsible innovation become generative? The anything-but-neutral relations ... more How can critique in responsible innovation become generative? The anything-but-neutral relations between science, technology and society, at the core of science and technology studies, have led to the development of different repertoires of critique. None of them fitted the configurations in the biomedical practices we came to study. There, biomedical experts presented us with an analysis of the power relations perpetuated through the mainstream practices in their fields and had built socio-material alternatives to the common forms of practicing biomedicine. The paper suggests conceptualising critical observations voiced by experts and socio-material alternatives built by them as ‘critique from within’ yielding collateral goods and bads. Rather than asking how to foster responsibility conditions in responsible innovation, the paper suggests modestly reclaiming critique by articulating already existing forms of responsibility practices developed by experts themselves and analysing the ambivalent effects they engender.
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Care-concepts have proliferated over the past couple of years, and have been used to study all ki... more Care-concepts have proliferated over the past couple of years, and have been used to study all kinds of practices, situations and sites. This begs the question: What is gained by studying practices in terms of care? The paper addresses this question by using a specific care-approach, which is the study of daily life dealings (Mol et al., 2010). It mobilises this approach to investigate a particular object, namely a good provision of haemodialysis treatment in nephrology practice. It does so in a given place, a dialysis unit in Austria. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with a focus on how patients' quality of life was improved, the paper reports how, in this dialysis unit, a quality of life questionnaire was introduced but soon abandoned. It first analyses how the prominent ideal that quality of life is to be measured with a questionnaire arrived in the goings-on in the unit. It then teases out how connecting and disconnecting patients to dialysis machines, and seeing them during the daily round enacted knowing, improving and quality of life in other ways than the prominent practice. It argues that questionnaires, forms, protocols, and the prominent practice they are part of may not only be made to fit into daily clinical practices or that daily life dealings are other to prominent practices. Daily clinical practices may also be the basis upon which questionnaires, forms, protocols, and the prominent practice they are part of are evaluated, abandoned, and forgotten. Recommending further investigation into the conditions of possibilities for alternative enactments of a good provision of health care to thrive, the paper concludes that what has been gained by using this specific careapproach to study this particular object are insights into daily life practices that have so far been othered in nephrology practice and STS.
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Sometimes there are moments in which German speakers will state that something schmeckt gut [tast... more Sometimes there are moments in which German speakers will state that something schmeckt gut [tastes good]. Focusing on a family celebration in a restaurant in Austria, the paper considers how in three schmeckt gut moments, participants variously order " tasting " as a process of experiencing, socializing, and processing. It argues that while it is possible to analyse how a person simultaneously experiences sensual qualities inherent in a particular dish, socializes with others, and processes food, these aspects are not equally relevant for the people involved in the " tasting ". Different modes of ordering " tasting " can exist next to each other such that a "tasting together in difference" takes place. Following from this, this paper suggests further investigation into the practical achievement of a "tasting together in difference" and the enabling role of care in this process. By shedding light on how tasting is done in practices of eating out in Western Europe, it contributes to a growing set of ethnomethodologically oriented studies on how tasting and taste are done in practice.
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Recent ethnographies from the anthropology of food and the senses have shown how moments in which... more Recent ethnographies from the anthropology of food and the senses have shown how moments in which people taste foods are shaped by scientific knowledge, methods and rationales. Building on approaches developed in science and technology studies, this paper offers an ethnography of the field to which this shaping power has been assigned: the scientific study of taste. Detailed tracing and analysis of two laboratory experiments on taste performed in laboratories in Western Europe brings out how both turn moments in which people taste into a bodily response. At the same time, since their technical setups address different societal problems and varying interest groups, they stage diverging versions: a perception versus a reaction to an exposure. The paper, thus, sheds light on how cultural and social norms, ideals, and practices shape the knowledge production about taste and its resulting effects.
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What influences how people taste the food they eat? This paper investigates how sensual engagemen... more What influences how people taste the food they eat? This paper investigates how sensual engagements with food, particularly tasting it, become contextualized in everyday life practices and social science theories. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Swiss hospital, the Kantonsspital Graubünden, the paper analyzes what doctors, patients and nurses bring up as shaping sensual engagements with food. It also investigates how sensual engagements with food become contextualized in three social scientific studies on “taste,” “eating” and “tasting.” The paper argues that the three different contexts developed in these studies, namely “society,” “food culture” and “in practice,” do not help to make sense of what was observed and was brought up by the people working and living in the hospital as shaping sensual engagements with food: what happens before, after and around eating. The paper therefore adds “mundane goings-on” as a fourth context and concludes that contexualizing tasting allows the addressing of social issues. It recommends further investigation of the relation between contexts.
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Thesis Chapters by Anna Mann
This thesis presents an ethnographic
investigation into practices of tasting.
Based on ethnograph... more This thesis presents an ethnographic
investigation into practices of tasting.
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in various
Western Europe settings in which
people sensually engaged with food and
drinks, the chapters show how tasting is
done by research subjects in sensory science
laboratories; guests in a restaurant;
medical professionals and patients in a
hospital; and people gathered for a wine
tasting event, daily dinner or a meal in a
convent. The ethnographic materials are
used to engage with what so far social
science literatures on tasting tend to take
for granted: that tasting is a physiological
response to a food object, leading on to
a multi-sensory experience of its qualities,
that do not just emerge from the
food but are co-shaped by the context
and that give rise to sensorial knowledge.
By investigating specificities, articulating
alternatives, showing construction processes,
and typecasting particular practices,
the chapters unpack each of these
assumptions. What emerges is an alternative,
composite understanding of tasting
as variously done in varied mundane
practices.
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Essays & Poetry by Anna Mann
Letters from two figures, who were part of an improvised performance at 4S/EASST 2016 conference ... more Letters from two figures, who were part of an improvised performance at 4S/EASST 2016 conference in Barcelona. The letters and introduction reflect on the risks involved in performance and artistic practice in STS, as well as how a conference is made otherwise as a result.
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Papers by Anna Mann
Thesis Chapters by Anna Mann
investigation into practices of tasting.
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in various
Western Europe settings in which
people sensually engaged with food and
drinks, the chapters show how tasting is
done by research subjects in sensory science
laboratories; guests in a restaurant;
medical professionals and patients in a
hospital; and people gathered for a wine
tasting event, daily dinner or a meal in a
convent. The ethnographic materials are
used to engage with what so far social
science literatures on tasting tend to take
for granted: that tasting is a physiological
response to a food object, leading on to
a multi-sensory experience of its qualities,
that do not just emerge from the
food but are co-shaped by the context
and that give rise to sensorial knowledge.
By investigating specificities, articulating
alternatives, showing construction processes,
and typecasting particular practices,
the chapters unpack each of these
assumptions. What emerges is an alternative,
composite understanding of tasting
as variously done in varied mundane
practices.
Essays & Poetry by Anna Mann
investigation into practices of tasting.
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in various
Western Europe settings in which
people sensually engaged with food and
drinks, the chapters show how tasting is
done by research subjects in sensory science
laboratories; guests in a restaurant;
medical professionals and patients in a
hospital; and people gathered for a wine
tasting event, daily dinner or a meal in a
convent. The ethnographic materials are
used to engage with what so far social
science literatures on tasting tend to take
for granted: that tasting is a physiological
response to a food object, leading on to
a multi-sensory experience of its qualities,
that do not just emerge from the
food but are co-shaped by the context
and that give rise to sensorial knowledge.
By investigating specificities, articulating
alternatives, showing construction processes,
and typecasting particular practices,
the chapters unpack each of these
assumptions. What emerges is an alternative,
composite understanding of tasting
as variously done in varied mundane
practices.