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dc.contributor.authorMcGuire, Coreen
dc.date.accessioned2021-02-10T13:01:56Z
dc.date.available2021-02-10T13:01:56Z
dc.date.issued2020
dc.identifierhttps://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/42646
dc.identifier50687*
dc.identifier.urihttps://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/26341
dc.description.abstractMeasuring difference, numbering normal provides a detailed study of the technological construction of disability by examining how the audiometer and spirometer were used to create numerical proxies for invisible and inarticulable experiences. Measurements, and their manipulation, have been underestimated as crucial historical forces motivating and guiding the way we think about disability. Using measurement technology as a lens, this book draws together several existing discussions on disability, healthcare, medical practice, embodiment and emerging medical and scientific technologies at the turn of the twentieth century. As such, this work connects several important and usually separate academic subject areas and historical specialisms. The standards embedded in instrumentation created strict but ultimately arbitrary thresholds of normalcy and abnormalcy. Considering these standards from a long historical perspective reveals how these dividing lines shifted when pushed. The central thesis of this book is that health measurements are given artificial authority if they are particularly amenable to calculability and easy measurement. These measurement processes were perpetuated and perfected in the interwar years in Britain as the previously invisible limits of the body were made visible and measurable. Determination to consider body processes as quantifiable was driven by the need to compensate for disability occasioned by warfare or industry. This focus thus draws attention to the biopower associated with systems, which has emerged as a central area of concern for modern healthcare in the second decade of the twenty-first century.
dc.languageEnglish
dc.relation.ispartofseriesDisability history
dc.rightsopen access
dc.subject.classificationbic Book Industry Communication::H Humanities::HB History::HBT History: specific events & topics::HBTB Social & cultural history
dc.subject.classificationbic Book Industry Communication::M Medicine::MB Medicine: general issues::MBX History of medicine
dc.subject.classificationbic Book Industry Communication::P Mathematics & science::PD Science: general issues::PDX History of science
dc.subject.otherdisability
dc.subject.othermeasurement
dc.subject.othernormalcy
dc.subject.otherquantification
dc.subject.othertechnology
dc.subject.otherinterwar
dc.subject.otherclassification
dc.subject.otherstandardisation
dc.subject.otherhistory
dc.subject.othermedical humanities
dc.titleMeasuring difference, numbering normal
dc.title.alternativeSetting the standards for disability in the interwar period
dc.typebook
oapen.identifier.doi10.7765/9781526143167
oapen.relation.isPublishedBybcb4ab08-c525-4e6c-88e5-a0cf0a175533
oapen.relation.isbn9781526143174
oapen.pages248
oapen.place.publicationManchester
dc.dateSubmitted2020-10-20T10:01:45Z


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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as open access