Rhythmic history: Towards a new research agenda for the history of health and medicine
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Standard
Rhythmic history : Towards a new research agenda for the history of health and medicine. / Hussey, Kristin D.
In: Endeavour, Vol. 46, No. 4, 100846, 2022.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Author
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - Rhythmic history
T2 - Towards a new research agenda for the history of health and medicine
AU - Hussey, Kristin D.
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Author
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Rhythm characterizes life on Earth. Daily physiological rhythms of eating and fasting, sleeping and waking, moving and resting, are common to almost all life forms which evolved under the solar light–dark cycle. Despite their ubiquity, historians of health and medicine have yet to grapple with the lived experiences of these daily rhythms in the past. This paper presents a potential new research agenda in ‘rhythmic history’ that understands rhythmicity as something which lies between biology and culture. Thinking with rhythms offers exciting opportunities to unite previously disparate historical studies of daily rhythms like eating and sleeping and opens up a new way to view the enmeshed connections between body and environment. In this paper, I take inspiration from the scientific concept of the ‘zeitgeber’ (‘time giver’), coined by the German chronobiologist Jürgen Aschoff, to frame a review of current literature relating to rhythms and explore Henry Lefebvre's notion of ‘rhythmanalysis’ as a methodological tool for historians undertaking ‘rhythmic histories’.
AB - Rhythm characterizes life on Earth. Daily physiological rhythms of eating and fasting, sleeping and waking, moving and resting, are common to almost all life forms which evolved under the solar light–dark cycle. Despite their ubiquity, historians of health and medicine have yet to grapple with the lived experiences of these daily rhythms in the past. This paper presents a potential new research agenda in ‘rhythmic history’ that understands rhythmicity as something which lies between biology and culture. Thinking with rhythms offers exciting opportunities to unite previously disparate historical studies of daily rhythms like eating and sleeping and opens up a new way to view the enmeshed connections between body and environment. In this paper, I take inspiration from the scientific concept of the ‘zeitgeber’ (‘time giver’), coined by the German chronobiologist Jürgen Aschoff, to frame a review of current literature relating to rhythms and explore Henry Lefebvre's notion of ‘rhythmanalysis’ as a methodological tool for historians undertaking ‘rhythmic histories’.
KW - Circadian rhythms
KW - Historiography
KW - Medicine
KW - Methodology
KW - Physiology
KW - Rhythmic history
U2 - 10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100846
DO - 10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100846
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 36521301
AN - SCOPUS:85143861246
VL - 46
JO - Endeavour
JF - Endeavour
SN - 0160-9327
IS - 4
M1 - 100846
ER -
ID: 329742605