Kearns, Gerard
(2006)
The Social Shell.
Historical Geography, 34.
pp. 49-70.
ISSN 1091-6458
Abstract
Medical geography begins with sickness and health. The policies
addressing disease, and the causes promoting good health are,
literally, vital. Here, as in social science as a whole, an historical
perspective helps: Things could have been different and may yet be different
again. Parallels between past and present propose lessons for today.
This approach is well captured in Mitchell Dean’s summary of Michel
Foucault’s project as the writing of critical and effective history. Critical
history highlights the contingency of the present, and effective history
gives us resources with which to consider alternatives. An important and
contested area that is illuminated by such a “political historicism” is the
nature of the social. This has both a material and a discursive context and
both are essential for medical geographers. Its material setting includes the
biological conditions of human existence. These conditions are resolutely
social. Historians influenced by Foucault have described the emergence
of the social as a distinct field of knowledge, expertise and government.
There is now a corpus of important geographical works on the emergence of
social policy in the areas of health, sickness, welfare, and urban planning.
Public health is one area where this discovery and invention of the social
occurs repeatedly. Far from being the individualistic Robinson Crusoe of
liberal or bourgeois ideology, human beings require a social shell if they
are to thrive.
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Keywords: |
Social; Shell; Medical; Geography; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography |
| Item ID: |
8654 |
| Depositing User: |
Gerry Kearns
|
| Date Deposited: |
23 Aug 2017 09:28 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Historical Geography |
| Publisher: |
Open Journal Systems |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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