The Routledge Companion to Health Humanities ed. by Paul Crawford, Brian Brown, and Andrea Charise (review)

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:

• The Routledge Companion to Health Humanities ed. by Paul Crawford, Brian Brown, and Andrea Charise
• Sakshi Srivastava (bio)

Paul Crawford, Brian Brown, and Andrea Charise, eds. The Routledge Companion to Health Humanities. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2020. 492 pp. Hardback, $280.00.

Ever since 2010, when Paul Crawford and colleagues first suggested expanding the purview of medical humanities to include healing practices beyond medicine and carers along with doctors, health humanities has continued to develop as an interdisciplinary field encompassing a variety of approaches and theoretical standpoints.¹ Envisaging a continuation of that perspective, The Routledge Companion to Health Humanities is a meticulous and descriptive collection of articles ranging across theory and praxis that emerge from a wide range of academic interests, practical improvement, and patient requirements, "engaging with the contributions of those marginalized from the medical humanities."² The marginalized include patients, their families, non-physician healthcare professionals, educators, and even social workers—those who are often found affected, associated, and subordinated by the institutions of biomedicine. The intellectual and discursive presence of these voices inherently and holistically critiques biomedical notions of self-sufficiency. The collection also embodies the "co-created," "co-operative," and colearning vision of the field for thinking about arts and humanities in healthcare, as opposed to the privileging of intellectual autonomy over non-medical or lived knowledge seen in medical humanities (6). This implies a non-hierarchical and collaborative approach to finding solutions to health-related issues, while changing and problematizing the boundaries of what can be identified and treated as exclusively biomedical problems.

In the past, Crawford and colleagues insisted on a more inclusive understanding of health humanities. This collection features that same insistence, but is oriented more towards the results of that inclusion: an array of recent innovations in the field. Reflecting this crucial distinction, the book has been divided into two parts. The first twenty-seven chapters critically assess medicine and healthcare via methodologies [End Page 236] from disciplines of the humanities. The first section also acknowledges and addresses the intersectional realities of providing and receiving health (and social) care in conjunction with race, indigeneity, ethnicity, and geographical divisions. This systematic inclusion corresponds to the "interdisciplinary, inclusive, applied, democratizing and activist approach" favored by health humanities as a field (3). Using the entanglements of humanities to interrogate biomedicine—and taking into consideration the other, less recognized stakeholders in care—these early chapters also establish health humanities as theoretically well grounded. For instance, the first chapter on genealogies of care borrows theoretical support from Foucault to understand the idea of recovery, which might otherwise seem to be monolithic and rooted in biomedicine. The second section consists of chapters that are comparatively compact and detail the applications engendered at the interdisciplinary points of contact among various academic disciplines, creative practices, and the systems of healing and well-being. The section division resembles the attunement of the field to the collaboration between theory and practice. Allowing an intensive view into the diversity of theoretical backgrounds and methodologies available in health humanities, this division embodies the applied-ness of the field, showing the interdependence of theory and praxis. In this way, the collection addresses the critique that the field lacks uniformity, deeming this a necessary sacrifice for inclusion. For example, Peter Meineck's chapters, "Post Conflict Resolution and the Health Humanities: The Warrior Chorus Program" and its applied counterpart, "Classics," both explore the same activist concept of supporting the veterans of wars through dramatic classics. The former discusses the background, methodology, and objectives of the program. The latter chapter expands on the practical side of the program, detailing its individual and community impact. It also highlights consequent public engagement and academic output within and beyond the veteran community. It will not be an overstatement to say that the section division systematically introduces readers to different ways of practicing health humanities.

The introduction by Crawford chronologically follows the shift to health humanities from what he considers the more restrictive scholarship of the domain of medical humanities. The introduction provides a remarkably useful preamble for beginners and experts alike. The first section, titled "Reflections and Critical Perspectives," contains chapters by academicians and theorists, including perspectives on subjects...