Medicine is a powerful symbol in human history and societies and it is difficult to distinguish its worldly properties, concerning daily functioning, actual capacities and contradictions, from the public image of expert knowledge to which we collectively delegate responsibility for our individual and collective well-being. The book stems from the desire and need to explore what is ""behind the scenes"" of medicine, in that gray area that is daily care practices. What the patient, or the external observer, often sees is the limelight of medicine: the moment in which the therapeutic or diagnostic act takes place, when the clinical intervention becomes defined and tangible. To arrive at that final moment, a vast network of preparation, coordination and maintenance activities took place away from the eyes of the ""public"", a hidden web of processes and practices that make effective care possible. The aim of the volume is to bring to light these processes (often neglected by the scientific literature and the collective representations), through an investigation that refers to the theoretical reflections of some classics of the sociological tradition, such as Erving Goffman and Anselm Strauss, integrating them with more recent developments in the field of organizational and social studies on science and technology. The volume presents and discusses two ethnographic studies carried out in opposite social and health contexts: the hospital Intensive care unit and the Health district grappling with the implementation of social and health integration services. The first case represents the technical nucleus of the medical-health apparatus, in which, through an intricate ensemble of technologies, drugs, clinical devices and organizational and professional choices, medicine shows the greatest effectiveness in domesticating the biological body and human variability. On the contrary, social and health integration services try to contain the uncertainty and instability that accompanies treatment trajectories outside hospital settings. The choice of cases stems from the intention to show how, despite the significant differences in context, the background remains as the space in which medicine is built on a daily basis.

This book is included in DOAB.