Cart
Free Shipping in the UK
Proud to be B-Corp

Not Tonight Joanna Kempner

Not Tonight By Joanna Kempner

Not Tonight by Joanna Kempner


£14.70
New RRP £24.00
Condition - Very Good
Only 1 left

Summary

Migraine is a disabling, and painful disorder that affects over 36 million Americans. Nevertheless, it is frequently dismissed, ignored, and delegitimized. The author argues that this general dismissal of migraine can be traced back to the gendered social values embedded in the way we talk about, understand, and make policies for people in pain.

Not Tonight Summary

Not Tonight by Joanna Kempner

Pain. Vomiting. Hours and days spent lying in the dark. Migraine is an extraordinarily common, disabling, and painful disorder that affects over 36 million Americans and costs the US economy at least $32 billion per year. Nevertheless, it is frequently dismissed, ignored, and delegitimized. In Not Tonight, Joanna Kempner argues that this general dismissal of migraine can be traced back to the gendered social values embedded in the way we talk about, understand, and make policies for people in pain. Because the symptoms that accompany headache disorders-like head pain, visual auras, and sensitivity to sound-lack an objective marker of distress that can confirm their existence, doctors rely on the perceived moral character of their patients to gauge how serious their complaints are. Kempner shows how this problem plays out in the history of migraine, from nineteenth-century formulations of migraine as a disorder of upper-class intellectual men and hysterical women to the influential concept of migraine personality in the 1940s, in which women with migraine were described as uptight neurotics who with-held sex, to contemporary depictions of people with highly sensitive migraine brains. Not Tonight casts new light on how cultural beliefs about gender, pain, and the distinction between mind and body influence not only whose suffering we legitimate, but which remedies are marketed, how medicine is practiced, and how knowledge about disease is produced.

Not Tonight Reviews

Kempner's incisive work analyzes migraine medicine and its gendered subtext as practitioners sought to make sense of the mind/body actions or interactions causing the common, yet devastating pain of sufferers. The book is beautifully written, with a moving preface in which Kempner locates herself as a fellow migraine sufferer as well as ethnographic observer. (Linda Blum, Northeastern University)

About Joanna Kempner

Joanna Kempner is assistant professor of sociology and an affiliate of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers University.

Additional information

GOR009384789
9780226179155
022617915X
Not Tonight by Joanna Kempner
Used - Very Good
Paperback
The University of Chicago Press
20141008
232
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - Not Tonight