Teaching the normal and the pathological: educational technologies and the material reproduction of medicine

Abstract

ABSTRACT That pathology and normality exist on a complex spectrum of bodily manifestation is an enduring problem at the heart of the philosophy, anthropology and history of medicine. As the primary locus for the reproduction of medicine, medical schools are important sites for cultivating knowledge of what is normal and what is not. Here students come to engage with the slippery concepts of normality and pathology in collaboration with a wide range of educational technologies – the cadavers, plastic models, illustrations and diagnostic tools which corral student knowledge of the body in both health and disease. These technologies are not universally employed across medical faculties, and variations in their use contributes to various constructions of pathology and normality. Ethnographic observation and historical research in medical faculties in Hungary, the Netherlands and Ghana, shows that educational practices are shaped by the epistemic traditions which manifest in the material environment of the medical school, and that these different sociomaterial settings contribute to inconsistent notions of normalcy. Although educational technologies often tend towards fixity in their representations of the body in health and disease, medical school practice in the north of Ghana resists the imposition of the often alien standards typically found in teaching materials imported from Europe or North America. By teaching around and beyond these materials, Ghanaian educators also challenge their assuredness and the intellectual history of contemporary medicine.