Identifying ontologies in a clinical trial
Language
en
Article de revue
This item was published in
Social Studies of Science. 2013, vol. 69, p. 1784 - 416
SAGE Publications
English Abstract
For a number of years now clinical trials have been the focus of a growing body of social science research and have come to represent the gold standard dor evidence-based medicine. While a considerable and wide–ranging ...Read more >
For a number of years now clinical trials have been the focus of a growing body of social science research and have come to represent the gold standard dor evidence-based medicine. While a considerable and wide–ranging body of research has been devoted to trial participants themselvcs, the approach is partial in that the participants’ reality tends to be cut loose from the very practices that constitute the beating heart of the trials. The practices of clinical research tend, indeed, to be accepted as an unquestioned premise from which myriad actions and consequences emerge. Following the praxiological turn initiated by Mol and basing my analysis on my fieldwork and an ethnographic account of the running of a clinical trial, I hope to propose a new reading of trial participation. Indeed, whatever their form or their objectives, trials are scientific experiments essentially and invariably grounded in a clinical design. The individuals who tajke part in trials must also contend with these two types of practices – the clinical and the scientific – yet the latter are often occulted or reduced to the former in terms of their significance for participants. Using my account of a routine visit in a trial conducted in Burkina Faso, I would like to examine the specific nature of these research practices and, in doing so, identify the ontologies they involve. How do these practices do the body? And what might the consequences be?Read less <
English Keywords
HIV/aids
Africa
Ethnography
ontology
body
clinical trials
ontology
body
clinical trials
Africa
HIV/aids
Origin
Hal imported