Testing and Diagnosis as Social Interventions: An Interview with Annemarie Jutel. (March 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Pienaar, Kiran; Petersen, Alan
• Other Names: Petersen Alan guest-editor.; Pienaar Kiran guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Science, technology & society. Volume 26:Number 1(2021)
• Page Start: 135
• Page End: 139
• Publication Date: 2021-03
• Subjects: Technology -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Science -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 509
• DOI: 10.1177/0971721820964887
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0971-7218

Abstract

Kiran Pienaar (KP) and Alan Petersen (AP): Thank you, Annemarie, for agreeing to share your perspectives in this interview. We are delighted to have this opportunity to engage with your insights and scholarly contributions on the sociology of diagnosis. In 2011 you co-edited a special issue of Social Science and Medicine entitled 'Toward a Sociology of Diagnosis' in which you called for sociologists to pay more attention to medical diagnosis as a central practice and classification tool of medicine. In the introduction, you note that 'diagnosis has had an absent presence in the sociology of health and illness' (Jutel & Nettleton, 2011, p. 793). Do you think this is still the case or has the field developed since then to attend more closely to the social issues and processes at work in diagnosis? In your view, does diagnosis merit continued/renewed sociological attention? And if so, why?