Outsiders, outcasts and eccentrics (Experiences of deviancy in the social history of medicine)

Merging the social history of medicine with the history of experiences, Outsiders, outcasts, and eccentrics explores the dimensions of deviance in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, India, and the United States. In their carefully selected case studies, the contributors use communities of experience as an overarching concept. Challenging the narrow individual-centred approach to deviance, the writers locate both deviance and normalcy in the relationship between individuals and their surrounding communities. As a whole, Outsiders, outcasts, and eccentrics approaches norm-making as entanglements between communality, experiences, and expectations, and it analyses the ways in which medicine and medical knowledge became intertwined in the same.