Hospital Land USA: Sociological Adventures in Medicalization

273 Pages·2016·3.426 MB·English

by  Wendy Simonds

Hospital Land USA
In Hospital Land USA, Wendy Simonds analyzes the wide-reaching
powers of medicalization: the dynamic processes by which medical
authorities, institutions, and ideologies impact our everyday experiences,
culture, and social life. Simonds documents her own Hospital Land
adventures and draws on a wide range of U.S. cultural representations –
from memoirs to medical mail, from hospital signs to disaster movies – in
order to urge critical thinking about conventional notions of care, health,
embodiment, identity, suffering, and mortality.
This book is intended for general readers, medical practitioners,
undergraduate and graduate students in courses on medical sociology,
medicine, medical ethics, nursing, public health, carework, visual culture,
cultural studies, and gerontology.
Wendy Simonds is Professor of Sociology and Director of Graduate
Studies in the Gerontology Institute at Georgia State University. She
is the author of Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic
and Women and Self-Help Culture: Reading between the Lines; co-editor of
Sex Matters: The Sexuality and Society Reader; and co-author of Laboring
On: Birth in Transition in the United States and Centuries of Solace: Expres-
sions of Maternal Grief in Popular Literature.
Fueled in equal parts by grief and rage and infused with acerbic humor,
Hospital Land USA captures the dehumanizing and disempowering effects
of treatment and hospitalization. Simonds’s accessible analysis of the “ideo-
logical décor” of the contemporary American hospital will not only enrich
medical sociology seminars, but also serves as a good read for anyone who
has, or will, spend time in that setting: that is, pretty much all of us.
Wendy Chapkis, PhD, Professor of Sociology, University of Southern
Maine; author of Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine
Death is certain. Time of death is not. But in Hospital Land USA, the other
S&M (Science and Medicine) as Wendy Simonds calls it, death is a fail-
ure, something to be suspended and avoided at whatever cost. And there
is no safe word. The surreal ordinariness of it all – from appointments
and forms to waiting rooms, scripts, and winning advertorials; exams and
tests to bills, claims, and satisfaction surveys; sighs of good news to the
emotional rollercoaster of risks, harms, hopes, and uncertainties – reduces
individuals to a collection of body parts to be increasingly scrutinized and
managed. The curing and caring that co-exists in this medicalized space
too often fails to account for the suffering involved in caring for the sick
and the old. Highly recommended.
Gayle Sulik, PhD, author of Pink Ribbon Blues:
How Breast Cancer Culture Undermines Women’s Health
Perceptive, funny and a little grouchy, Hospital Land USA is Wendy
Simonds’s wise rumination on why hospitals and other health care insti-
tutions still don’t “get it.” Using her keen eye as a medical sociologist,
Simonds explores hospital rituals, enforced optimism and, most impor-
tantly, the at times callous management of very ill patients, asking why we
can’t do a better job acknowledging the inevitability of death.
Barron H. Lerner, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine and
Population Health, NYU Langone Medical Center; author of
The Good Doctor: A Father, A Son and the Evolution of Medical Ethics
Hospital Land USA
Sociological Adventures
in Medicalization
Wendy Simonds
First published 2017
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
The right of Wendy Simonds to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Simonds, Wendy, 1962– author.
Title: Hospital land USA: sociological adventures in medicalization /
Wendy Simonds.
Description: New York, NY: Routledge, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016017413| ISBN 9780415748070 (hardcover:
alk. paper) | ISBN 9780415748087 (pbk.: alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781315796697 (ebook)
Subjects: | MESH: Medicalization | Sociology, Medical | United States
Classification: LCC RA418 | NLM WA 31 | DDC 362.1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017413
ISBN: 978-0-415-74807-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-74808-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-79669-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Adobe Caslon
by codeMantra
In memory of
Chet Meeks
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Contents
List of Photographs ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Collaborating with the Dead 1
1 Chet Goes to Chemo: The Semiotics and Sadism
of the Medical Industrial Complex 35
2 More Adventures in Hospital Land:
An Alternative Medical History 79
3 Sick Stories: Medicalized Media, Collective
Cultural Anxieties, and Therapeutic Voyeurism 121
Conclusion: Instead of a Happy Ending 183
Appendix A: A Brief History of Hospital Land 225
Appendix B: Disease Disasters 230
vii
viii CONTENTS
Appendix C: Melodramatic Memoirs 233
Appendix D: Death Comedies 239
Bibliography 243
Index 255
Photographs
Chet with Hinkypunk v
I.1 Chet and Me 2
I.2 Bad Blood Pressure Score! 7
I.3 Bellevue Hospital Center: Can’t Fail to Satisfy (top) 22
I.4 Bellevue Hospital Center: Can’t Fail to Satisfy (bottom) 22
I.5 Thank you for choosing this facility to provide you with
an accurate mammogram 25
1.1 Waiting Room TV 50
1.2 Survivorship Program Upcoming Events.… Life Wins
at Winship! 51
1.3 CARE STRONGER THAN CANCER 52
1.4 COMPASSION Tunnel Sign 53
1.5 COMPASSION Tunnel 53
1.6 COURAGE/ANGER 55
1.7 HOPE/PAIN 55
1.8 DISCOVERY/FRUSTRATION 55
1.9 IMAGINATION/EXHAUSTION 56
1.10 Chief of the Medical Staff 59
1.11 ONE BLANKET PER PATIENT 61
1.12 HOW DO YOU PLAY ROLE IN PATIENT SAFETY? 63
1.13 Chet Having His Temperature Taken 65
ix