Anthropology, clinical pathology and the electronic fetal monitor: Lessons from the heart

Clinical pathology, the social process of applying disease categories and managing disease processes, is defined and its anthropological study described using examples from a study of Electronic Fetal Monitor (EFM) use during hospital obstetrical care in a rural Canadian village. Anthropological work on clinical pathology is shown to have helped doctors and nurses in this village to better understand both the cultural contingencies of their basic science knowledge and the historical contingencies of its application to the care of women during pregnancy and birth. It is argued that cultural anthropologists should study diagnostic and treatment activities, especially those involving sophisticated technology; their methods and theories make them ideally suited to this task.