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Beyond Information: Intimate Relations in Sociotechnical Practice

Lancaster University, m.mort{at}lancaster.ac.uk

Andrew Smith

Royal Lancaster Infirmary, andrew.f.smith{at}mbht.nhs.uk

More and faster information will transform our experience of healthcare, according to policymakers, while social theorists have argued that medicine has become `informatized': a new medical paradigm is being shaped. We question both the policy-led conflation of `information' and `healthcare' and ideas about the extent of the informatization of medicine, by exploring how these ideas resonate in medical work, revisiting our studies of expertise in two clinical domains where information technologies are central to practice. The projection of new information programmes as creating knowledge which is independent of space and time runs the risk of devaluing the experiential, haptic and affective knowledge of both apprentices and practitioners. Information, we argue, cannot underpin medicine unless it is recognized and defined as generative, dynamic and intimate, rather than storable and deliverable.

Key Words: human—machine relations • information • intimacy • labour • medicine • mythology • practice

Sociology, Vol. 43, No. 2, 215-231 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0038038508101162


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