Sociologists mostly in the US explore social and political processes that cause diagnostic categories to emerge and disappear, how they are contested within and outside medicine, how diagnostic categories are applied to patients, how diagnostic practices change, and similar issues. Their topics include diagnosis and medicalization, mapping the diagnostic process in psychiatry from talk to action, gender identity disorder and the contested terrain of diagnosis in the transgender rights movement, the vanishing diagnosis of Asperger's Disorder, and diagnosing the criminal addict as biochemistry in the service of the state. No index is provided. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)