Research Handbook on Socio-Legal Studies of Medicine and Health

Research Handbooks in Law and Society series

Edited by Marie-Andrée Jacob, University of Leeds, UK and Anna Kirkland, University of Michigan, US

This timely Research Handbook offers significant insights into an understudied subject, bringing together a broad range of socio-legal studies of medicine to help answer complex and interdisciplinary questions about global health – a major challenge of our time.

‘Wide-ranging and thoughtfully curated, this collection demonstrates just how far the tentacles of healthcare and law extend into social life. Taken together, though, these chapters suggest that the epistemic reach of both law and medicine ultimately exceed their grasp, a conclusion that practitioners and scholars alike will both rue and applaud. With such provocative and carefully researched pieces, this volume is sure to foster a deep rethinking of socio-legal studies of medicine and health.’
– Carol A. Heimer, Northwestern University, US

‘Handbooks are often conceived to tie together already-established research fields. With the Research Handbook on Socio-Legal Studies of Medicine and Health, Anna Kirkland and Marie-Andreé Jacob have in fact inaugurated an important new field of study while generously acknowledging its diverse ancestries. I’ve always thought that STS should instead have been dubbed TLS (technoscience, law and society) whether in studies of health, climate change, migration, inequality or their interconnections. Through an empirically rich set of chapters, handbook contributors perceptively show how socio-legal problems (from femicide to alternative medicine, genetic ancestry testing and gun violence) in highly (bio)medicalized societies throughout the world are always historically and ethnographically situated. This Handbook will be of equal interest to legal scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, bioethicists, philosophers and STS scholars.’
– Ayo Wahlberg, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

‘One of the strengths of socio-legal studies is to show how seemingly mundane and technical practices and artefacts, such as clinical protocols or bureaucratic procedures, shape social realities: how they include and exclude people, and redistribute duties and entitlements. This fantastic volume gives a flavour of the breath and diversity of this lively (inter-)discipline, and also pushes its boundaries into new topics and methodological terrains.’
– Barbara Prainsack, University of Vienna, Austria

对社会的新的研究手册-Legal Studies of Medicine and Health more than convinced me of the value of reading diverse subfields at the intersections of law and medicine together. That the editors and contributors achieved this while drawing out rather than downplaying different scholarly genealogies, and without forcing a shared normative goal, was especially impressive. This book is a vital contribution to navigating our post-coronavirus world.’
– Charis Thompson, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

‘This exciting new book is certain to become a key reference point in socio-legal studies of medicine and health. In disrupting existing intellectual silos, its contributors both shed new light on questions that will be familiar to healthcare lawyers and open up important new avenues of research.’
– Sally Sheldon, University of Kent, UK, and University of Technology Sydney, Australia

‘The interface between medicine and law is one of the most dynamic and exciting areas for contemporary socio-legal scholarship. The editors have assembled an outstanding and diverse collection of scholars who are doing some of the most innovative work in this field. The result is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the interaction between two of the great cultural and institutional systems of any society.’
– Robert Dingwall, Nottingham Trent University, UK