Paul Atkinson is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Cardiff University. Recent publications include For Ethnography (SAGE 2014) and Thinking Ethnographically (SAGE 2017). The fourth book in his quartet will be Crafting Ethnography, also for SAGE. The fourth edition of Hammersley and Atkinson Ethnography: Principles in Practice was published by Routledge in 2019. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and of the Learned Society of Wales.
Recent years have seen the development of a sociology of medical knowledge, including the construction of medical opinion, the fabric of medical discourse, and the medical construction of the body. This volume both assesses and contributes to this sociological understanding of medical practice. Underlying the analysis is research on the work of hematologists, offering a rich resource for understanding the complexities and contradictions between physical bodies and social embodiment, medical talk, and technical apparatus. Using this material, the author skillfully demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of the existing understanding of medical knowledge. Among the issues explored are:
