The Chronopolitics of Life
Rethinking temporalities in health and biomedicine beyond the life course
Nolwenn Bühler (Editor), Nils Graber (Editor), Victoria Boydell (Editor), Cinzia Greco (Editor)
The Chronopolitics of Life represents an important, timely and novel contribution in the fields of anthropology, social sciences of medicine, science and technology studies and cognate. By examining the concept of chronopolitics, this interdisciplinary collection explores the coproduction of temporalities, power relations and inequalities in health contexts.
The book offers an original perspective on how temporalities shape the embodiment of health-related inequalities, at both the beginning and the end of life. The book provides empirical examples of how technoscientific and biomedical endeavours reconfigure the temporalities of life, as well as describing how time becomes a resource that is unequally distributed. By investigating lived experiences, the authors reveal how specific temporal regimes can lead to discrimination on the basis of age, race, gender, (dis)ability and sexual orientation. This differentially shapes the experiences of ill-health, biomedical practices, the governing of bodies, biographies and the life course.
List of contributors
Foreword
Introduction: temporalities in health and biomedicine beyond the lifecourse
Nolwenn Bühler, Nils Graber, Victoria Boydell, and Cinzia Greco
Part I: Knowing
1 Somatic rhythm versus pharmacologically induced time: poor women’s resistance and accommodation to biomedical contraception in Tunisia
Irene Maffi
2 Suspended and fragmented temporalities in breast and lung cancer in the UK
Cinzia Greco
3 The chronopolitics of exposures: choreographing temporalities in a Swiss environmental health cohort
Nolwenn Bühler
Part II: Negotiating
4 Governing the margins: illness, prison and temporalities of care in France
Meoïn Hagège
5 Coming of Age when AIDS is ‘old’: waithood, youth and risk in an HIV treatment era
* Alison Swartz*
6 Struggling, enjoying, falling. Chronopolitics in living with chronic kidney disease in Austria
Anna Mann
Part III: Governing
7 On demographic reason and reasons: population, crisis, and the future
Tyler Zoanni
8 Responsibilities and reproductive technologies over time: from the future to the present
Victoria Boydell and Andrea Caballero
9 Endometriosis stories: ‘thick’ temporalities in frontline screening in Belgium
Collectif Endo plurielle
Index
DOI: 10.14324/111.9781800089747
Publication date: 01 December 2025
PDF ISBN: 9781800089747
EPUB ISBN: 9781800089754
Hardback ISBN: 9781800089723
Paperback ISBN: 9781800089730
Nolwenn Bühler (Editor) 
Nolwenn Bühler is Associate Professor, Institute of Social Science, STS Lab, University of Lausanne.
Nils Graber (Editor)
Nils Graber is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Chair for the History of Science, Humboldt University in Berlin.
Victoria Boydell (Editor)
Victoria Boydell is Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Women’s Health, University College London.
Cinzia Greco (Editor)
Cinzia Greco is Mid-Career Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at The University of Manchester.
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01 February 2026
The Chronopolitics of Life
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01 December 2025
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13 May 2025
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