Doing Distinctions

The transformations in radiology induced by new imaging technology can be understood as instances of `doing distinctions' by both technology and human actors. This paper combines the analytical frameworks of Gieryn and Bourdieu to understand the reconfigurations engendered by the medical implementation of visualization apparatuses such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). It examines the reactions of radiologists to these transformations, which forced them to renegotiate visual expertise and to reconstitute their professional and disciplinary identity. The paper argues that imaging practices are practices of boundary work and distinction, aimed at regaining professional authority and accumulating symbolic capital within the professional field. Boundary work and distinction practices are thus means to improve both the prestige of the profession and the actors' individual status within the scientific or hospital community. The paper further argues that visualization machines and images are not exclusively used for diagnostic and research purposes but are also material and epistemic resources that are deployed in practices of boundary work and distinction. Technology and pictures serve as tools to demonstrate professional skills and power, to increase one's reputation, and to renegotiate identity. Drawing on interviews, documents and fieldwork in several radiology departments and MRI centres in Europe and the USA, the paper reconstructs processes of `doing distinctions' related to the implementation of MRI and other imaging technologies in medicine. It explores the identity and accumulation strategies of radiologists and other medical specialists through an examination of their boundary work and distinction practices, which are focused on material, social and epistemic resources, and boundaries.

[1]  Barry Ferguson Saunders,et al.  CT Suite: The Work of Diagnosis in the Age of Noninvasive Cutting , 2008 .

[2]  Kelly Joyce,et al.  From numbers to pictures: The development of magnetic resonance imaging and the visual turn in medicine , 2006 .

[3]  N. Hopwood.  Visual Standards and Disciplinary Change: Normal Plates, Tables and Stages in Embryology , 2005 .

[4]  Amit Prasad,et al.  Scientific Culture in the ‘Other’ Theater of ‘Modern Science’ , 2005 .

[5]  Nissim Mizrachi,et al.  Between formal and enacted policy: changing the contours of boundaries. , 2005, Social science & medicine.

[6]  Amit Prasad,et al.  Making Images/Making Bodies: Visibilizing and Disciplining through Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) , 2005 .

[7]  José van Dijck,et al.  The Transparent Body: A Cultural Analysis of Medical Imaging , 2005 .

[8]  Andrew Warwick.  X‐rays as Evidence in German Orthopedic Surgery, 1895–1900 , 2005, Isis.

[9]  O. Amsterdamska.  Demarcating Epidemiology , 2005 .

[10]  Steven D. Brown,et al.  Lost in the Mall with Mesmer and Wundt: Demarcations and Demonstrations in the Psychologies , 2005 .

[11]  N. Degele.  On the Margins of Everything: Doing, Performing, and Staging Science in Homeopathy , 2005 .

[12]  A. Mitchell.  Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity Joseph Dumit , 2004, The Lancet Neurology.

[13]  Tal Golan,et al.  The Emergence of the Silent Witness , 2004, Social studies of science.

[14]  H. Boon,et al.  Moving forward? Complementary and alternative practitioners seeking self-regulation. , 2004, Sociology of health & illness.

[15]  S. Cohn.  Increasing resolution, intensifying ambiguity: an ethnographic account of seeing life in brain scans , 2004 .

[16]  The ‘Righteous Wrath’ of Pierre Bourdieu , 2003 .

[17]  A. Bruni.  The Social Shaping of Technology (2nd ed.) , 2003 .

[18]  Christina Lammer,et al.  HORIZONTAL CUTS & VERTICAL PENETRATION: THE 'FLESH AND BLOOD' OF IMAGE FABRICATION IN THE OPERATING THEATRES OF INTERVENTIONAL RADIOLOGY , 2002 .

[19]  A. Beaulieu.  Images Are Not the (Only) Truth: Brain Mapping, Visual Knowledge, and Iconoclasm , 2002 .

[20]  A Beaulieu,et al.  Voxels in the Brain , 2001, Social studies of science.

[21]  D. Allen.  Narrating Nursing Jurisdiction: “Atrocity Stories” and “Boundary-Work” , 2001 .

[22]  C. Waldby.  The Visible Human Project : Informatic Bodies and Posthuman Medicine , 2000 .

[23]  R. Burri.  MRI in der Schweiz. Soziotechnische, institutionelle und medizinische Aspekte der Technikdiffusion eines bildgebenden Verfahrens , 2000 .

[24]  I. Vernersson.  Open University Press , 2000 .

[25]  Richard West,et al.  The Making of the Unborn Patient: a Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery , 1999 .

[26]  J. Dumit.  Objective Brains, Prejudicial Images , 1999, Science in Context.

[27]  T. Gieryn.  Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line , 1999 .

[28]  D. DiSantis,et al.  Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging in the Twentieth Century , 1998 .

[29]  Michael Lynch.  The production of scientific images : Vision and re-vision in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science , 1998 .

[30]  Christophe Lécuyer,et al.  Instrument Makers and Discipline Builders: The Case of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance , 1995, Perspectives on Science.

[31]  T. Gieryn.  Boundaries of Science , 1995 .

[32]  Lisa Cartwright,et al.  Screening The Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture , 1995 .

[33]  B. Duden.  Disembodying Women: Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn , 1994 .

[34]  A. Cambrosio,et al.  Ehrlich's "Beautiful Pictures" and the Controversial Beginnings of Immunological Imagery , 1993, Isis.

[35]  S. Webb,et al.  Insight and industry: on the dynamics of technological change in medicine , 1992, Medical History.

[36]  S. Woolgar,et al.  Representation in Scientific Practice , 1990 .

[37]  W. Wiegand.  : The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor , 1990 .

[38]  B. Pasveer,et al.  Knowledge of shadows: the introduction of X-ray images in medicine. , 1989, Sociology of health & illness.

[39]  P. Burke.  Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste , 1989 .

[40]  P. Gummett.  The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology , 1988 .

[41]  Mary Elizabeth Lynch,et al.  The externalized retina: Selection and mathematization in the visual documentation of objects in the life sciences , 1988 .

[42]  D. Edge,et al.  The social shaping of technology , 1988 .

[43]  Wiebe E. Bijker,et al.  Science in action : how to follow scientists and engineers through society , 1989 .

[44]  Samuel Y. Edgerton,et al.  Aesthetics and Digital Image Processing: Representational Craft in Contemporary Astronomy , 1987 .

[45]  S. Barley.  Technology as an occasion for structuring: evidence from observations of CT scanners and the social order of radiology departments. , 1986, Administrative science quarterly.

[46]  B. Latour.  Visualization and cognition: thinking with eyes and hands , 1986 .

[47]  Michael Lynch,et al.  Discipline and the Material Form of Images: An Analysis of Scientific Visibility , 1985 .

[48]  T. Pinch,et al.  The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology might Benefit Each Other , 1984 .

[49]  T. Gieryn.  Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science: Strains and interests in professional , 1983 .

[50]  Stuart S. Blume,et al.  Insight and Industry: On the dynamics of technological change in Medicine Cambridge , 1991 .

[51]  R. Tannahill.  Flesh and Blood , 1975 .

[52]  T. G.,et al.  Logic in Practice , 1934, Nature.

[53]  Henry J. Van Dyke.  Righteous Wrath , 1918 .