From the editors' introduction: This is is the first book of its kind devoted to a critical examination of the discipline, profession, and practice of physiotherapy. Like all critical work, its aim, our aim as editors and authors, is transformation. We do not aim to provide a neutral or objective reading of physiotherapy. Instead, we want to shake things up, perturbate, instigate, revolutionize, manipulate.
Our title, Manipulating Practices, with its multiple meanings conveys our commitment to extending, rethinking, and reshaping the ossified ways physiotherapy is understood, practiced, taught, and researched. Etymologically, “manipulation” in its earliest form simply referred to a “handful” of something, and by 1828 was understood as the skillful handling of objects or persons. In physiotherapy, manipulation refers to a therapeutic technique of applying a manual thrust to a joint at end range of motion (Rubinstein, van Middelkoop, Assendelft, de Boer, & van Tulder, 2011).
The term “manipulative physiotherapy” has also come to be used as an umbrella term for a range of hands-on therapeutic skills. In contemporary usage, manipulation can also have a negative connotation, referring to unfairly influencing another. In all of these usages, manipulating has always been about the hands, about metaphorically or physically touching others in order to make a change. In this book, we interrogate the narrow range of outcomes that dominate the physiotherapy landscape, to manipulate practice and theory towards a more expansive vision for the profession. The manipulations you will find in these chapters are handfuls of clay, molded into temporary forms that can be taken away and refashioned for other purposes. The reader is invited to handle the material in whatever ways deemed useful to influence positive change in the profession and the world.
Find the book as pdf at Researchgate
Physiotherapy Theory and Practice. ISSN 0959-3985.