Welfare embodied: The materiality of hospital dress: A commentary on Topo and Iltanen-Tahkavuori.

摘要

For British - and perhaps other - readers the images presented in Topo and Iltanen-Tahkavuori's (2010) fascinating and groundbreaking article provoke a slight sense of shock. They seem strange, even alien. Part of the reason is that we are not accustomed in the UK to the idea of hospital dress. Something that is familiar and taken for granted in one system proves strange and unusual in another; and this provokes fresh questions about the nature of public provision in different welfare systems. But Topo and Iltanen-Tahkavuori's (2010) article is groundbreaking also for bringing into focus aspects of care that have been neglected across the field, suggesting new and original ways of looking at the hospital experience in general, and ones that foreground the bodily in ways that extend beyond the simply medical.