The pursuit of clinical recognition

Aesthetics, care, and music therapy in North American hospitals

Bibliographic Data

ID2289174
AuthorsMeredith Evans (0000-0002-9986-3185, Department of Health and Society University of Toronto Scarborough Toronto Ontario Canada, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume37
Issue4
Pages396-410
Publication date2023-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedical Anthropology Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0745-5194 • E-ISSN: 1548-1387
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/maq.12783
PMID37354542
OpenAlexW4381847952
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited56

This article examines the making of clinical care by tracing how music therapists integrate their work within North American hospitals. Situated on the margins of the clinic, music therapists are in pursuit of clinical recognition-to be perceived and understood as valuable to biomedicine. The pursuit of clinical recognition illustrates how the configuration of care is an aesthetic concern, negotiated not only through processes of reasoning and rationalization but also through sensory-affective experiences. Music therapists cultivate a clinical aesthetic to their care by demonstrating clinical efficacy to their medical colleagues and self-fashioning clinical subjectivities through participation in medical rounds and charting. While clinical recognition creates conditions of possibility for music therapists to provide care in biomedical institutions, recognition is perpetually elusive for hospital music therapists. By cultivating sonic atmospheres and connections, music therapists disrupt and exceed a normative clinical aesthetic, illustrating ways of caring in the clinic beyond biomedical scripts

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Music therapy · Normative · Psychotherapist · Rationalization (economics · Situated · Computer Science · Empathy and Medical Education · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Medicine · Music Therapy and Health · Psychology

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