Annemarie Jutel (Te Herenga Waka / Victoria University of Wellington) will give a lecture at GRIN on “The social function of diagnosis.”

Diagnosis is not just a clinical phenomenon, the labelling of a material disorder, it is a social consensus about what matters in society, and it has important social consequences. In this presentation, Annemarie Jutel will look critically at the concept of diagnosis, the process of diagnosis, and diagnostic consequences, to provide a deeply textured understanding of how it shapes health, illness and disease. The critical distance that her sociological analysis delivers will offer explanatory insights for theorists but also for those who practice or
experience diagnosis. Understanding the social function of diagnosis helps explain its importance, as well as its failure to deliver upon its promises.

Biography :

Annemarie is a critical diagnosis scholar, whose ground-breaking work in the sociology of diagnosis focuses on how medical classification interacts with social and cultural interests. She has written about medicalisation and the interests of the pharmaceutical industry, the diagnostic process and delivery of the dire diagnosis, and the presence and impact of diagnosis in popular culture and literature. She was the director of Mataora: Encounters between Medicine and the Arts. Annemarie is the Head of School in the School of Health at Te Herenga Waka (Victoria University of Wellington). She has also worked as an intensive care nurse and a rural first responder, and has just finished her first graphic novel.

*The conference will also be presented on Zoom.