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Article ID: CBB659793713

Objects, Agency, Discontinuity: Orthopaedic Devices and People with Polio-Related Disabilities in Poland after 1945 (2021)

Marcin Stasiak (Author)

Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology
Volume: 26
Issue: 2
Pages: 104-124

Publication Date: 2021
Edition Details: Special Issue: The Body and Technology
Language: English

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Medicine and society Users of technology Medical technology Technology and State Technoscience; science and technology studies Poliomyelitis Disabilities; disability; accessibility 20th century Poland

This text addresses the general question of how medicine-based objects—for example, leg-braces, crutches, orthopaedic boots, and corsets—were included in the daily-life routines of so-called “polio-survivors” in Poland from the early 1950s onwards. It discusses orthopaedic devices as both part of the state policy towards disabled people and sites of negotiating discursive rules. This highlights the issues of agency and decision-making for people with disabilities. To explore the tension between top-down plans and individual agency, the article draws on individual life stories. The source basis for this article is formed by twenty-three interviews recorded by the author between 2012 and 2015. The article examines attitudes towards supportive gear in several life stages: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and late adulthood. In life-long perspective orthopaedic devices appear as ambiguous objects. They have triggered a range of responses from rejection to total acceptance. Transformations of attitudes, the article shows, were closely connected with certain life stages—an observation with many practical outcomes.

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Associated with

Article Donna J. Drucker (2021) Introduction: The Body and Technology. Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology (pp. 8-10). unapi

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB659793713/

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