Adams, Tracey Lynn 1966-

views updated

Adams, Tracey Lynn 1966-

PERSONAL:

Born 1966.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Sociology, University of Western Ontario, Social Science Centre, Room 5306, London, Ontario N6A 5C2, Canada. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, professor of sociology.

WRITINGS:

A Dentist and a Gentleman: Gender and the Rise of Dentistry in Ontario, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

The Organization and Experience of Work, Thomson Nelson (Scarborough, Ontario, Canada), 2007.

Contributor to anthologies, including Family Patterns, Gender Relations, edited by Bonnie Fox, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2001. Contributor to periodicals, including Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, Women and Health, Social Science and Medicine, and Gender and Society.

SIDELIGHTS:

Tracey Lynn Adams is a sociologist and professor who recounts the social history of dentistry in nineteenth-century Ontario in her book A Dentist and a Gentleman: Gender and the Rise of Dentistry in Ontario. She explains that before the mid-nineteenth century, dentists were accorded very low status, viewed as uneducated, and grouped with craftsmen rather than professionals. Dentists then began an ambitious project to elevate their status, and by 1868 they had seen the passage of legislation that regulated their trade, requiring testing and licensing. Those who supported this movement then launched another campaign to discredit dentists who did not have a license, who advertised their services, charged very low fees, or otherwise behaved in a manner that would possibly lower the status of dental practitioners. They wished for dentists to be seen as gentlemen, and they also sought to make the very idea of dentistry more important in the general consciousness. They tied dentistry to public health, warning that tooth decay and dental disease were but the first steps on the road to the physical and mental deterioration of society. Adams also explores the ways and the reasons why males have dominated the field of dentistry. She points out that even in contemporary times, there are many more male dentists than female, although the numbers of each gender are roughly equal in the fields of medicine and law. "Adams brings considerable insight to her discussion of these facts and their causes, and she presents useful comparisons among the professions," wrote R. Steven Turner in an Isis review. Oskar Sykora, a contributor to the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, stated that the book is of interest to historians and "to anyone who has an interest in the evolving role of women in the professional societies in general and the dental profession in particular."