The Body Multiple is an extraordinary ethnography of an ordinary disease. Drawing on fieldwork in a Dutch university
hospital, Annemarie Mol looks at the day-to-day diagnosis and treatment of atherosclerosis. A patient information
leaflet might describe atherosclerosis as the gradual obstruction of the arteries, but in hospital practice this
one medical condition appears to be many other things as well. From one moment, place, apparatus, specialty, or
treatment to the next, a slightly different "atherosclerosis" is being discussed, measured, observed,
or stripped away. Mol demonstrates that this multiplicity does not imply fragmentation. Instead, the disease is
made to cohere through a range of tactics including transporting forms and files, making images, holding case conferences,
and conducting doctor-patient conversations.
The Body Multiple juxtaposes two distinct texts. Alongside Mol's analysis of her ethnographic material--interviews
with doctors and patients; observations of medical examinations, consultations, and operations--runs a parallel
text in which she reflects on the relevant literature. Mol draws on medical anthropology, sociology, feminist theory,
philosophy, and science and technology studies to reframe such issues as the disease-illness distinction, subject-object
relations, boundaries, difference, situatedness, and ontology. In dialogue with one another, Mol's two texts meditate
on the multiplicity of reality-in-practice.
Presenting philosophical reflections on the body and medical practice through vivid storytelling, The Body Multiple
will be important to those in medical anthropology, philosophy, and the social study of science, technology, and
medicine.