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Short abstract:

This study investigates the emergence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) as a scientific, clinical, and social problem through comparative sociological analysis of three populations: athletes, veterans, and domestic violence survivors.

Long abstract:

This study investigates the emergence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) as a scientific, clinical, and social problem through comparative sociological analysis of three populations: athletes, veterans, and domestic violence survivors. While TBI has a rich clinical and scientific history, its visibility as a public health problem is more recent. Our research tracks TBI’s emergence across the three populations. We are interested in the convergence of ideas about TBI as a work object for scientists, clinicians, practitioners, and affected populations. Specifically, when and how did TBI come to be understood as a scientific problem within each of these communities, and with what impacts? How has TBI been made visible through publications, collaborations, media coverage, and social movements? How do each of these communities understand the problem of TBI?

A robust STS tradition investigates the conditions under which research questions, methods, and broader lines of inquiry are created, maintained, contested, and sunset. Certain key concepts, such as paradigms, epistemes, boundary objects, and sociotechnical imaginaries, have guided researchers for generations. Our project intervenes in these debates through multi-sited ethnography and network analysis of a novel convergence between research communities. We ask: what social and intellectual processes spurred scientists in the fields of military medicine, sports medicine, and domestic violence/intimate partner violence to coalesce around shared interests in TBI? For more than two decades, doctors, military officials, sports medicine professionals, and researchers in the DV/IPV community developed lines of inquiry linking their subject to brains and brain health. How have these come together?