Routledge Revivals-The Management of Normality

Maintaining normality is hard work. It takes time, effort, and foresight. However, because it is romantic, it is also taken for granted – not least by social scientists. In a series of dazzling case studies, this book (1990), now reissued with a new preface, shows how normality is constructed and imposed in our society. Maintaining normality is hard work. It takes time, effort, and foresight. However, because it is romantic, it is also taken for granted – not least by social scientists. In a series of dazzling case studies, the author shows in his book The Management of Normality (first published in 1990, now reissued with a new preface) how normality is constructed and imposed in our society. The work explores the social order of a cancer ward, the power and authority of the medical regime, the interview situation in psychotherapy, the politics of agoraphobia, the domestic management of intimacy, jealously as a class phenomenon, and the war survivors’ syndrome as a social problem. The result is one of the most penetrating and stimulating books on the organization of social life to be published at the time.