文档介绍：Beyond the natural body
Beyond the Natural Body presents an episode in the history of life sciences
that is essential to our current understanding of sex and the body, and the
relations between gender and science. Since the early decades of the
twentieth century, the notion of the hormonally constructed body has e
the dominant mode of conceptualizing bodies, particularly female bodies, to
such an extent that we now assume that it is a natural phenomenon. This
book challenges the idea that there is such a thing as a “natural” body and
demonstrates that it is the process by which scientific claims achieve
universal status that constructs such discourses as natural facts.
Beyond the Natural Body tells the fascinating story of scientists’ search for
the many tons of ovaries, testes and urine that were required in experiments
to develop the hormonal body concept. It traces the origins of sex hormones
and follows their development through mass-production as drugs to their
eventual transformation into the contraceptive pill. Nelly Oudshoorn argues
that the power to control sex and the body is not restricted to the domain of
texts and ideologies. In addition, she describes the dynamic, capillary action
of a science which linked cultural assumptions, concepts, ovaries, urine,
diagnostic tests, laboratory equipment, marketing strategies, clinical trials,
population policies and bodies, thus transforming the world we live in.
Nelly Oudshoorn is Assistant Professor in the Department of Science
Dynamics at the University of Amsterdam, and has written numerous articles
on gender and biology.
Beyond the natural body
An archeology of sex hormones
Nelly Oudshoorn
London and New York
First published 1994
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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