Constructing RSI: Belief and Desire [Paperback]

Yolande Lucire (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2004 | ISBN-10: 086840778X | ISBN-13: 978-0868407784 | Edition: 1

Constructing RSI: Belief and desire explains how and why medical symptoms collectively known as repetitive strain injury (RSI) became so widespread during the late 1980s. The book catalogues the response to these symptoms against a history that is more than three centuries old, and shows how RSI gained currency within large sections of the Australian medical profession and was readily accepted among the working population, where it often caused high levels of hysteria. The book is brought to life by reference to 20 case studies.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Author Dr. Yolande Lucire straddles a number of disciplines as she documents the flaws in medical thinking and practice that allowed an experiment in preventative medicine to go wrong. In considering the process by which many well-meaning doctors and medical institutions came to diagnose symptoms of 'RSI' and then advocate a wrong understanding of these symptoms, Constructing RSI puts medical systems and ethics under the spotlight.

Product Details

• Paperback: 234 pages
• Publisher: University of New South Wales Press; 1 edition (February 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 086840778X
• ISBN-13: 978-0868407784
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #296,950 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #37 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Exercise & Fitness > Injury Prevention

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Most impressive!, February 13, 2012

By 

anna - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Constructing RSI: Belief and Desire (Paperback)

Constructing RSI: Belief and Desire
Edward Shorter PhD
Faculty of Medicine
University of Toronto
CANADA

Re Ideology and Aetiology: RSI, an Epidemic of Craft Palsy
I found this thesis most impressive and I unconditionally recommend its acceptance.
This thesis takes a scholarly look at the epidemic of 'Repetition Strain Injury" (RSI) that affected Australia during the l980s, placing the epidemic in the context of writing on international patterns of epidemic hysteria and of Australian medical politics and labour relations. The author's conclusion, that RSI represented a combination of suggestibility on the part of sufferers, self-serving aggrandisement on the part of some members of the medical profession, and a Labour-relations strategy on the part of the unions strikes me as well born out by the facts. Lucire has reconstructed this story on the basis of primary sources, has set it within the framework of medical sociology, and has told it in a literate and lively manner. That the author herself had a partisan role in the events she describes does not detract from the scholarly value of the thesis: Given the research she had done, I think it would be difficult to come to any conclusion other than the one she reaches.
The dissertation represents that rather rare bird, a scholarly study that has the ability to make a considerable impact on public policy and discussion. A triumph of original scholarship and thought, it deserves to be published as a book. Lucire's work should have a considerable impact on the debate about such vexing conditions as RSI, both in Australia and abroad.

5.0 out of 5 stars Constructing a Cure, January 1, 2008

By 

Tequila Mockingbird (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Constructing RSI: Belief and Desire (Paperback)

This book was alternately infuriating and interesting. Two days after finishing it, I noticed that my RSI (of ten years) had disappeared. Hallelujah!