The Quantification Of Bodies In Health

The Quantification of Bodies in Health aims to deepen understanding of the quantification of the body and of the role of self-tracking practices in everyday life. It brings together authors working at the intersection of philosophy, sociology, history, psychology, and digital culture.

This edited volume explores the intersection of medicine and philosophy throughout history, calling attention to the role of quantification in understanding the medical body. Retracing current trends and debates to examine the quantification of the body throughout the early modern, modern and early contemporary age, the authors contextualise important issues of both medical and philosophical significance, with chapters focusing on the quantification of temperaments and fluids, complexions, functions of the living body, embryology, and the impact of quantified reasoning on the concepts of health and illness. With insights spanning from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, this book provides a wide-ranging overview of attempts to ‘quantify’ the human body at various points. Arguing that medicine and philosophy have been constantly in dialogue with each other, the authors discuss how this provided a strategic opportunity both for medical thought and philosophy to refine and further develop. Given today’s fascination with the quantification of the body, represented by the growing profusion of self-tracking devices logging one’s sleep, diet or mood, this collection offers an important and timely contribution to an emerging and interdisciplinary field of study.

Contributors include Luc Berlivet (INSERM, CNRS, EHESS, Paris), Alberto Cambrosio (McGill University), Sir Iain Chalmers (James Lind Library, Oxford), Nicholas Dodier (INSERM, CNRS, EHESS, Paris), Michael Donnelly (Bard College), Volker Hess (Humboldt-University), Peter Keating (University of Quebec at Montreal), Ann La Berge (Virginia Tech University), Ilana Löwy (INSERM, CNRS, EHESS, Paris), Harry M. Marks (Johns Hopkins University), Lion Murard (INSERM, CNRS, Paris), Mark Parascandola (National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland), Theodore M. Porter (University of California at Los Angeles), Andrea Rusnock (University of Rhode Island), Christiane Sinding (INSERM, CNRS, EHESS, Paris), and Ulrich Tröhler (Institut für Geschichte der Medizin der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität).

The first book to fully explore the multiple ways in which body work features in health and social care and the meanings of this work both for those employed to do it and those on whose bodies they work. Explores the commonalities between different sectors of work, including those outside health and social care Contributions come from an international range of experts Draws on perspectives from across the medical, therapeutic, and care fields Incorporates a variety of methodological approaches, from life history analysis to ethnographic studies and first person accounts

How do men perceive their bodies? how can empirical study of the body inform our understanding of the social world of men? what are the implications of such understanding for public health?

Today's society is obsessed with the body, its size, shape and healthiness. Governments, business and the popular media, spend and earn fortunes encouraging populations to get healthy, eat properly, exercise daily and get thin. But how are current social trends and attitudes towards the body reflected in the curriculum of schools, in the teaching of Physical Education and Health? How do teachers and health professionals influence young people's experiences of their own and others' bodies? Is health education liberating or merely another form of regulation and social control? Drawing together some of the latest research on the body and schooling, Body Knowledge and Control offers a sharp and challenging critique of (post) modern-day attitudes toward obesity, health, childhood and the mainstream science and business interests that promote narrow body-centred ways of thinking. Includes: * A critical history of notions of body, identity and health in schools. * Analysis of the 'obesity epidemic', eating disorders * Analysis of the influence of nurtured body image in racism, sexism, homophobia and body elitism in schools.

Discusses what bioelectrical impedance analysis measures in terms of electrical and biological paramaters; how BIA should be performed and how BIA measurements can be standardized; the validity of BIA technology in the estimation of total body water, fat-free mass, and adiposity; appropriate clinical uses and limitations of BIA technology; and future directions for basic science, clinical research, and epidemiological evaluation of body composition measurements.