Interested in the relationship between technological advance and the nature and classification of disease, this Science and Technology Studies Dissertation Research Improvement Grant will examine innovations in prosthetic science and the medical phenomenon known as phantom limb syndrome (PLS). Broadly, this work will constitute a socio-cultural and historical analysis of the modernization of dismemberment, interested in the expansion and sophistication of technologies used to replace parts of the body lost to amputation, and the modification of PLS in terms of classification, causal assumptions and treatment options. This qualitative project will employ a number of research methods including semi-structured, open-ended interviews; analysis of historical and archival data; content analysis of medical literature published on phantom limb from 1930 to the present; review of online resources and documents; and review of mainstream and alternative media. NSF funds will support interviews with key researchers working on aspects of PL including aspects of theorizing, characterizing, prevalence, pain, and treatment, will be conducted in person. Efforts will be made at each site to visit lab space, observe work and interview other relevant persons. The intellectual merit of this project includes a socio-cultural analysis of dismemberment. Dismemberment is an issue extensively discussed in the clinical literature, implicated in the disability literature, and alluded to within the recent wave of theories of embodiment interested in experiential or lived accounts. Notably absent is a theoretically informed socio-cultural examination of the intersection of dismemberment and technologies of the body. Further, this work contributes to the sub-discipline of medical sociology. Medical sociology takes seriously the role of sciences, technologies and medicines in the production of contemporary epistemological and ontological concerns. Projects that theorize and investigate the cultural, discursive, institutional and/or relational aspects of health, healing, wellness, illness and death, are considered core contributions to the field. The proposed work integrates an examination of the knowledges, techniques, and technologies relevant to part-loss, part-replacement, and lived partiality. More broadly, in recent years, social scientists have begun to theorize both about and from the body. This project attempts to connect these concerns directly with the study of science and technology. Thus, this work will contribute to: 1) the analytic import of the body as an object and site of inquiry; and 2) the theoretical juxtaposition of technologies of the body with both the social body and individual bodies (in this case-amputees). In addition, this project is sensitive to epistemological, ontological, ethical/moral and political concerns regarding bio-technological joinings and engages directly with the multifaceted techno phobic/philic divide. Practically, the synthesis and analysis of knowledge concerning dismemberment, phantom limb syndrome and prosthetic science: 1) will function to inform future research in this area; and 2) may be valuable as a resource to amputees and others.
