Health circulates inside bodies, as a condition of cells, tissues and organs, and outside bodies as signs. Health stories offer people bits of a subjectivity of health: an awareness of what is interior, expressed in signs that are exterior. Three genres of health stories are described: technoluxe stories, unbearable health stories and strategic health stories. These stories call out to people, bidding to be subjectifiers of health. Stories connect people who may become patients, providers of health services, health products, images, fears and desires. Following Latour, health stories are understood as a form of plug-in: resources that provide people with an ability to recognize and connect what was disparate.
Alexander, G. C. , Kurlander, J. and Wynia, M. K. (2006). Physicians in retainer (‘concierge’) practice: A national survey of physician, patient, and practice characteristics . Journal of General Internal Medicine, 20(12), 1079-1083 .
2.
Atkinson, M. (2003). Tattooed: The sociogenesis of a body art. Toronto: University of Toronto Press .
3.
Atkinson, P. (1997). Narrative turn or blind alley?Qualitative Health Research, 7, 325-344 .
4.
Blum, V. (2003). Flesh wounds: The culture of cosmetic surgery. Berkeley & Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press .
5.
Bourdieu, P. (2000). Pascalian meditations. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press .
6.
Conrad, P. (2004). Human growth hormone and the temptation of biomedical enhancement . Sociology of Health and Illness, 26(2), 184-215 .
7.
Davis, K. (1995). Reshaping the female body: The dilemma of cosmetic surgery. London & New York: Routledge .
8.
Elliott, C. (2003). Better than well: American medicine meets the American dream. New York: Norton .
9.
Farmer, P. (2003). Pathologies of power: Health, human rights and the new war on the poor. Berkeley & Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press .
10.
Foucault, M. (1985). The use of pleasure: The history of sexuality, volume two. New York: Pantheon .
11.
Foucault, M. (1997). Michel Foucault: Ethics: subjectivity and truth. Ed. P. Rabinow . New York: The New Press .
12.
Frank, A. W. (1995). The wounded storyteller: Body, illness, and ethics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press .
13.
Frank, A. W. (2002). What’s wrong with medical consumerism? In S. Henderson and D. Petersen (Eds.), Consuming health: The commodification of health care, pp. 13-30. London & New York: Routledge .
14.
Frank, A. W. (2004a). The renewal of generosity: Illness, medicine, and how to live. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press .
15.
Frank, A. W. (2004b). Emily’s scars: Surgical shapings, technoluxe, and bioethics . The Hastings Center Report, 34(2), 18-29 .
16.
Frank, A. W. (2005). The perfect storm of enhancement . The Hastings Center Report, 35(1), 46-47 .
17.
Fukuyama, F. (2002). Our posthuman future: Consequences of the biotechnology revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux .
18.
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Garden City, NJ: Prentice Hall .
19.
Gergen, K. (2000). The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. New York: Basic Books .
20.
Gibson, W. (2003). Pattern recognition. New York: Berkley Books .
21.
Habermas, J. (1987). The theory of communicative action. Vol. 2: Lifeworld and system. Trans. T. McCarthy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
22.
Haraway, D. (2000). How like a leaf. London & New York: Routledge .
23.
Henderson, S. and Petersen, D. , Eds. (2002). Consuming health: The commodification of health care. London & New York: Routledge .
24.
Hilfiker, D. (2005). Stupid deaths. Review essay of Paul Farmer, Pathologies of power . health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, 9(3), 403-416 .
25.
Hoberman, J. (2005). Testosterone dreams: Rejuvenation, aphrodisia, doping. Berkeley & Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press .
26.
Irvine, L. (1999). Codependent forevermore: The invention of self in a twelve step program. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press .
27.
James, W. (1987). The varieties of religious experience. In William James, Writings 1902-1910, pp. 1-447. New York: The Library of America .
28.
Kleinman, A. (1988). The illness narratives: Suffering, healing, and the human condition. New York: Basic Books .
29.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network theory. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press .
30.
MacIntyre, A. (1984). After virtue, 2nd edn.Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press .
31.
McLaren, L. (2006). No bucks for Botox? Get credit . The Globe & Mail (Toronto), 21 January: section L.
32.
Mattingly, C. (1998). Healing dramas and clinical plots: The narrative structure of experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
33.
Mattingly, C. (2000). Emergent narratives. In C. Mattingly and L. C. Garro (Eds.), Narrative and the cultural construction of illness and healing, pp. 181-211. Berkeley & Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press .
34.
Morris, D. (1997). About suffering: Voice, genre, and moral community. In A. Kleinman , V. Das and M. Lock (Eds.), Social suffering, pp. 25-45. Berkeley & Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press .
35.
Nelson, H. L. (2001). Damaged identities, narrative repair. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press .
36.
Parens, E. , Ed. (1998). Enhancing human traits: Ethical and social implications. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press .
37.
Reid, M. and Clark, A. (2002). The active citizen works hard: Living with chronic heart failure. In S. Henderson and A. Petersen (Eds.), Consuming health: The commodification of health care, pp. 140-154. London & New York: Routledge .
38.
Rothman, S. and Rothman, D. (2003). The pursuit of perfection: The promise and perils of medical enhancement. New York: Pantheon .
39.
Saul, S. (2005). Gimme an Rx! Cheerleaders pep up drug sales . New York Times,28 November (retrieved 30 November 2005).
40.
Sered, S. S. and Fernandopulle, R. (2005). Uninsured in America: Life & death in the land of opportunity. Berkeley & Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press .
41.
Smith, D. (1987). The everyday world as problematic. Toronto: University of Toronto Press .
42.
Smith, D. (2005). Institutional ethnography: A sociology for people. Oxford, UK & Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press .
43.
Stark, A. (2006). The limits of medicine. London & New York: Cambridge University Press .
44.
Wente, M. (2006). Shooting from the hip . The Globe and Mail, 7 January: F1-F1, F6-F6 .
45.
White, M. and Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: Norton .
46.
Zuger, A. (2005). For a retainer, lavish care by ‘boutique doctors’ . New York Times, 30 October (retrieved 30 October 2005).
