The Chronopolitics of Life
Rethinking Temporalities in Health and Biomedicine Beyond the Life Course
9781800089730
9781800089723
Distributed for UCL Press
The Chronopolitics of Life
Rethinking Temporalities in Health and Biomedicine Beyond the Life Course
An examination of the links between power, inequality, and time in health governance.
This interdisciplinary collection examines the role of time in inequalities within biomedicine, technology, and healthcare. How is time wielded as a tool of power through its valuation, standardization, and allocation? How has time become an unequally distributed resource in health and biomedicine, and how has it contributed to medical discrimination for patients at different stages of life? To answer these questions, The Chronopolitics of Life draws on real-world examples from across the globe, spanning from reproductive health to chronic disease, and sensitive to both local variations in medicine and the wider forces shaping temporalities in health.
This interdisciplinary collection examines the role of time in inequalities within biomedicine, technology, and healthcare. How is time wielded as a tool of power through its valuation, standardization, and allocation? How has time become an unequally distributed resource in health and biomedicine, and how has it contributed to medical discrimination for patients at different stages of life? To answer these questions, The Chronopolitics of Life draws on real-world examples from across the globe, spanning from reproductive health to chronic disease, and sensitive to both local variations in medicine and the wider forces shaping temporalities in health.
224 pages | 6.14 x 9.21 | © 2025
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Table of Contents
List of contributors
Introduction: Temporalities in health and biomedicine beyond the lifecourse
Nolwenn Bühler, Nils Graber, Victoria Boydell, and Cinzia Greco
Part I: Knowing
1 Somatic rhythm versus pharmacologically induced time: poor women’s resistance and accommodation to biomedical contraception in Tunisia
Irene Maffi
2 Suspended and fragmented temporalities in breast and lung cancer in the UK
Cinzia Greco
3 The chronopolitics of exposures: choreographing temporalities in a Swiss environmental health cohort
Nolwenn Bühler
Part II: Negotiating
4 Governing the margins: illness, prison and temporalities of care in France
Meoïn Hagège
5 Coming of Age when AIDS is ‘old’: waithood, youth and risk in an HIV treatment era
Alison Swartz
6 Struggling, enjoying, falling. Chronopolitics in living with chronic kidney disease in Austria
Anna Mann
Part III: Governing
7 On demographic reason: population, crisis, and the future
Tyler Zoanni
8 Responsibilities and reproductive technologies over time: from the future to the present
Victoria Boydell and Andrea Caballero
9 Endometriosis stories: ‘thick’ temporalities in frontline screening in Belgium
Collectif Endo plurielle
Index
Introduction: Temporalities in health and biomedicine beyond the lifecourse
Nolwenn Bühler, Nils Graber, Victoria Boydell, and Cinzia Greco
Part I: Knowing
1 Somatic rhythm versus pharmacologically induced time: poor women’s resistance and accommodation to biomedical contraception in Tunisia
Irene Maffi
2 Suspended and fragmented temporalities in breast and lung cancer in the UK
Cinzia Greco
3 The chronopolitics of exposures: choreographing temporalities in a Swiss environmental health cohort
Nolwenn Bühler
Part II: Negotiating
4 Governing the margins: illness, prison and temporalities of care in France
Meoïn Hagège
5 Coming of Age when AIDS is ‘old’: waithood, youth and risk in an HIV treatment era
Alison Swartz
6 Struggling, enjoying, falling. Chronopolitics in living with chronic kidney disease in Austria
Anna Mann
Part III: Governing
7 On demographic reason: population, crisis, and the future
Tyler Zoanni
8 Responsibilities and reproductive technologies over time: from the future to the present
Victoria Boydell and Andrea Caballero
9 Endometriosis stories: ‘thick’ temporalities in frontline screening in Belgium
Collectif Endo plurielle
Index