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Introduction

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Assemblages of Health

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Abstract

This chapter introduces the key features of Deleuze’s philosophy and indicates how his most important concepts may be taken up in the study of health and illness. The chapter identifies three enduring problems in the health and social sciences that the adoption of Deleuze’s methods should help to resolve. The first concerns the challenge of defining health in a positive or substantive way. The second involves the task of accounting for the means by which bodies become well (or ill), and the array of actors, objects, affects and events involved in the experience of health and illness. The third problem concerns the most effective methods for investigating the various social and structural forces which mediate health and illness. In flagging the ways these problems will be investigated throughout the book, this chapter introduces the book’s central arguments and the concerns of the individual chapters.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social Sciences and Health Research Unit, Monash University, Caulfield East, VIC, Australia

    Cameron Duff

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Duff, C. (2014). Introduction. In: Assemblages of Health. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8893-9_1

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