Explorations of a Mind-Traveling Sociologist

"Explorations of a Mind-Traveling Sociologist" is a book of thematically interconnected ethnographic essays by the internationally esteemed sociologist Renée C. Fox, who employs a participant observer outlook to provide unique insight on such enduring—and pressing—issues as the lived experiences of physicians and patients, including patients who are physically challenged, elderly, mortally ill or beyond the reach of medical care; the origins and consequences of epidemic outbreaks of old and new plague-like infectious diseases that occur and recur, despite the impressive advances of medicine; the concomitants and challenges of aging; the wellsprings, dynamics and significance of medical humanitarian action; engagement with a “beyond borders” world view; the occurrence of national and international events of major moral as well as political and legal import and repercussions; and the meaning and meaningfulness of teaching, exploring, questing and writing. Latently associated with these themes are the author’s social values and social conscience. Composing these essays from a participant observer outlook heightens and enriches the author’s observations over the course of her daily life, enabling her to engage in “mind travel” to places and people she has intimately known in the past and to places she has yearningly hoped to visit but never has.

Renée C. Fox is the Annenberg Professor Emerita of the Social Sciences, Emerita Senior Fellow of the Center for Bioethics and Professor Emerita of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and the Schools of Medicine and Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. She is the author of Doctors Without Borders: Humanitarian Quests, Impossible Dreams of Médecins Sans Frontières (2014); In the Field: A Sociologist’s Journey (2011); In the Belgian Château: The Spirit and Culture of a European Society in an Age of Change (1994); and Experiment Perilous: Physicians and Patients Facing the Unknown (1959). She is the co-author, with Judith P. Swazey, of Spare Parts: Organ Replacement in American Society (1992) and The Courage to Fail: A Social View of Organ Transplants and Dialysis (1974).