In this important theoretical contribution to the area of refugee studies based on ethnographic field work among Kurdish refugees, the author has uniquely combined empirical evidence and contemporary sociological theories of diasporas and transnationalism. The book provides essential reading for anybody looking for a comprehensive view of refugee resettlement issues and it will be of special interest to anybody concerned with the topical Kurdish question.

In the early twentieth century, people in the southwestern Pacific nation of Vanuatu experienced rapid population decline, while in the early twenty-first century, they experienced rapid population growth. From colonial governance to postcolonial sovereignty, Moral Figures shows that despite attempts to govern population size and birth, reproduction in Vanuatu continues to exceed bureaucratic economization through Ni-Vanuatu insistence on Indigenous relationalities. Through her examination of how reproduction is made public, Alexandra Widmer demonstrates how population sciences have naturalized a focus on women's fertility and privileged issues of wage labour over women's land access and broader social relations of reproduction. Widmer draws on oral histories with retired village midwives and massage healers on the changes to care for pregnancy and birth, as well as ethnographic research in a village outside the capital of Port Vila. Locating the Pacific Islands in global histories of demographic science and the medicalization of birth, the book presents archival material in a way that emphasizes bureaucratic practices in how colonial documents attempted to render Indigenous relationalities of reproduction governable. While demographic imaginaries and biomedical practices increasingly frame fertility control as an investment in the reproductive health of individual bodies, the Ni-Vanuatu worlds presented in Moral Figures show that relationships between people, land, knowledge, kin, and care make reproduction a distributed and assisted process.

The collected papers in this volume cover the effects of environmental stress under a biological and energetic model. Examples are taken from fossil and living animal populations, and from outlier human populations and traditional societies. These examples indicate that stress increases energy demands and so reduces reproductive fitness. A wide range of stressful situations also are analyzed under the less stringent conditions experienced by modern human populations, when cultural factors assume importance. These emphasize the interaction between genetic, physiological, psychological and social factors in everyday life and in clinical settings.

Living with Diabetes and Uncertainty in Cairo offers an ethnographic exploration of the interactions of two different understandings of type-2 diabetes: one related to the notion of �aghṭ, translated as “pressure� or “stress,� and another related primarily to obesity. The book is set in Egypt but draws links to a diabetes clinic in Denmark and a multinational medical company, as well as engaging with international diabetes research and guidelines. It tells a story of uncertainty, not only among people in Cairo, but also within medical research, and considers what uncertainty may generate in both bodies and societies at large. The chapters provide valuable insight into the lives of those in Cairo who are diagnosed with type-2 diabetes, and explore how those lives are linked to global movements. The book ultimately reflects on the question of what is overlooked and why in prevention strategies and treatments of type-2 diabetes in Egypt. It will be of particular interest to scholars of anthropology, global and public health, and the Middle East and North Africa.

"Soul, Psyche, Brain" is a collection of essays that address the relationships between neuroscience, religion and human nature. The book highlights some startling new developments in neuroscience that have many people rethinking spirituality, the mind-body connection, and cognition in general. "Soul, Psyche, Brain" explores questions like: What are the neurological effects of meditation and prayer? How does the mind develop psychological and spiritual self-awareness? And what are the practical implications of brain-mind science for religious faith and moral reasoning?

The coronavirus pandemic forces us to rethink our contemporaneity. It has brought to the surface dimensions of human fragility that partially contradict the euphoria and human hubris of the fourth industrial revolution (artificial intelligence). It has also aggravated the social inequality and racial discrimination that characterize our societies. The book argues that the virus, rather than an enemy, must be viewed as a pedagogue. It is trying to teach us that the deep causes of the pandemic lie in our dominant mode of production and consumption. The systemic overload of natural resources creates a metabolic rift between society and nature that destabilizes the habitat of wild animals and the vital cycles of natural regeneration whereby pandemics become an increasingly recurrent phenomenon. In trying to take seriously this lesson the book proposes a paradigmatic shift from the current civilizatory model to a new one guided by a more equitable relationship between nature and society and the priority of life, both human and non-human.

As a biological, cultural, and social entity, the human fetus is a multifaceted subject which calls for equally diverse perspectives to fully understand. Anthropology of the Fetus seeks to achieve this by bringing together specialists in biological anthropology, archaeology, and cultural anthropology. Contributors draw on research in prehistoric, historic, and contemporary sites in Europe, Asia, North Africa, and North America to explore the biological and cultural phenomenon of the fetus, raising methodological and theoretical concerns with the ultimate goal of developing a holistic anthropology of the fetus.

A focus throughout on lifespan perspectives and a consideration of palliative care across all ages. Consideration of different cultural perspectives, beliefs, thoughts and practices outside Western societies and dominant paradigms. Integrates primary research throughout, including a focus on contemporary research from social media. Complements mainstream psychological approaches to life-limiting illness by exploring death, dying and palliative care with a critical health psychology lens.

1) Classic anatomical atlases 2) Detailed labeling of the earliest phases of prenatal neurological development 3) Appeals to neuroanatomists, developmental biologists and clinical practitioners. 4) Persistent relevance - brain development is not going to change

Recent progress in brain science has been remarkable, especially with regard to advances in the area of neuroscience. Particularly in the past decade, there have been many important discoveries about signal transduction in the brain. With this background, biological research in affective disorders has become well developed in relation to neural signaling. However, this field is fairly hard to understand comprehensively, and there is relatively little integrative work with clinical psychiatry in spite of the involvement of a wide variety of scien tific disciplines. This monograph brings together up-to-date reviews from several young Japanese scientists who work in basic and clinical neuroscience. The intention is to explain in plain language the information that has evolved on signal transduction in terms of the biological abnormalities and mechanisms of anti depressants. The model shown on the cover (and on page 24) is intended to help the reader understand signal transduction in the brain and the patho physiology of affective disorders as well as the mechanisms of antidepressants.

What set our ancestors off on a separate evolutionary trajectory was the ability to flex their reproductive and social strategies in response to changing environmental conditions. Exploring new cross-disciplinary research that links this capacity to critical changes in the organization of the primate brain, Social DNA presents a new synthesis of ideas on human social origins - challenging models that trace our beginnings to traits shaped by ancient hunting economies, or to genetic platforms shared with contemporary apes.

An empowering re-education to fix our broken sexual culture. Dispelling the myth that everyone else is having "perfect sex", or even that there is such a thing, this book explores taboos, debunks myths, and brings together the latest research to a topic that has preoccupied the vast majority for millennia. Reframing assumptions about sex, and moving away from a shame-based approach to a pleasure-focused, biopsychosocial one, Kate Moyle, a certified psycho-sexologist and relationship therapist, aims to encourage curiosity and pleasure, open up a variety of perspectives and voices, build awareness and discovery, and enable readers to think about sex holistically. With a question-and-answer format directly addressing the reader, you can discover the sex you like having and move to a place of more acceptance, less judgement, and the freedom to be curious. Up to date and inclusive of all genders, bodies, and sexualities, this is a sex re-education, empowering you to explore your preferences, expand your horizons, and maximize you and your partner(s) potential for rewarding, and intimate sex.

The coronavirus pandemic forces us to rethink our contemporaneity. It has brought to the surface dimensions of human fragility that partially contradict the euphoria and human hubris of the fourth industrial revolution (artificial intelligence). It has also aggravated the social inequality and racial discrimination that characterize our societies. The book argues that the virus, rather than an enemy, must be viewed as a pedagogue. It is trying to teach us that the deep causes of the pandemic lie in our dominant mode of production and consumption. The systemic overload of natural resources creates a metabolic rift between society and nature that destabilizes the habitat of wild animals and the vital cycles of natural regeneration whereby pandemics become an increasingly recurrent phenomenon. In trying to take seriously this lesson the book proposes a paradigmatic shift from the current civilizatory model to a new one guided by a more equitable relationship between nature and society and the priority of life, both human and non-human.

This book explores the experiential and affective dimensions of structural transformation in South Asia through contemporary and historical accounts of life, ageing, illness, and death. The contributions to this book include analyses from various regions in South Asia, and topics discussed uncover how people's experiences of life, ageing, illness, and death are entangled with the technology of governance, biomedicine, neoliberal restructuring and other national/international policies. Structured in three parts - governance, technology, and citizenship; well-being and restructuring of the social; waiting, hesitation, and hope as attitudes in facing the precariousness and fundamental uncertainty of life - the book brings to light the ways in which people face and continue to engage with their own and others' lives cautiously, waveringly, but with a sense of hope. A novel contribution to the study of how people struggle or navigate their lives through the conditions of inequity and precariousness in South Asia, this book will be of interest to researchers studying anthropology, sociology, history, medical and development studies of South Asia, as well as to those interested in cultural and social theory.

The Politics of Ethnic Consciousness criticizes essentialist and unitary notions of ethnicity and shows the complex interaction between historical processes, recent political developments and competing views within and about ethnic groups. Welcoming the social constructionist turn, the editors disagree with its overemphasis on the arbitrary character of ethnic identification and the neglect of political economy. Contributions on such diverse regions as Brazil, Ghana, Macedonia and Sri Lanka, examine the multivocal process of the construction and reconstruction of ethnic identities through time.

The presentation and interpretation of visual information is essential to almost every activity in human life and most endeavors of modern technology. This book examines the current status of what is known (and not known) about human vision, how human observers interpret visual data, and how to present such data to facilitate their interpretation and use. Written by experts who are able to cross disciplinary boundaries, the book provides an educational pathway through several models of human vision; describes how the visual response is analyzed and quantified; presents current theories of how the human visual response is interpreted; discusses the cognitive responses of human observers; and examines such applications as space exploration, manufacturing, surveillance, earth and air sciences, and medicine. The book is intended for everyone with an undergraduate-level background in science or engineering with an interest in visual science. This second edition has been brought up to date throughout and contains a new chapter on "Virtual reality and augmented reality in medicine."

This book provides a unique ethnographic account of women living with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) in India. It examines how contaminated environments and political-economic changes render urban middle-class women in India vulnerable to PCOS, a condition which has the potential to disrupt conventional, normative feminine biographies of marriage and childbearing. The volume revolves around two main themes: how toxic landscapes, the endocrine disrupting chemicals suffusing them, and the political-economic environments related to them are linked to endocrine disorders such as PCOS; and how the biosocial disruptions caused by PCOS are both affecting women and reflective of changes in contemporary urban India. The author draws on anthropological fieldwork to investigate these connections through a fresh approach, combining a political ecological framework with perspectives from the anthropology of toxic exposures and health-environment systems. The first of its kind, this volume will be indispensable to students and researchers of anthropology, particularly medical anthropology, medical sociology, human geography, science and technology studies, medical humanities, health-environment systems, endocrine disorders, public health, and South Asian studies.

In Europe as well as in other parts of the world, xenophobia and racism are among the unsolved problems of the ending 20th century. Globalization, mass migration and unemployment as well as the need to invent new supra- or crossnational identities require new political answers concerning the problems of inclusion and exclusion.
In the United States and in Canada, 'affirmative action' programmes are among those policies which are intended to redress the injustice of discrimination based primarily on race, ethnicity, sex, but also on national origin, religion, or disability.
This timely book is the first to present an overview of these hotly debated questions and the anti-discrimination policies in different countries. Experts from the United States, Canada and Europe examine the historical, institutional, judicial and sociological conditions of affirmative action and look at shifting concepts of racism, equality, integration and assimilation. They address the vital questions of whether policies originally created to increase opportunities for African Americans can be applied in Europe; whether the primary goal of 'affirmative action' should be to correct injustice or to safeguard diversity; and whether the democratic ideal of individual equality is at odds with what many perceive as preferential treatment.
Moral success but political failure? Compensatory justice or reverse discrimination? This important book evaluates more than thirty years of affirmative action and helps to develop new instruments to deal with the roots and the effects of discrimination.

Provides clear summaries of Fluorescence in situ hybridization technologies and others. Comprehensively covers established and emerging methods. Chapters from an international team of leading researchers. Useful for students, researchers and clinicians.

This study adds to the small but growing literature on Black health history--the rise of hospital care and hospital services provided to Blacks from the antebellum era to the integration era, a period of some 150 years. The work examines the political, policy, legal, and philanthropic forces that helped to define the rise, development, and decline of Black hospitals in the United States. Particular discussion is given to the federal Hill-Burton Act of 1946 and the extent to which the legislation impacted Black hospital development. The roles of the Freedman's Bureau, National Medical Association, National Hospital Association, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in the development of Black hospitals is highlighted.

This book celebrates and captures examples of the excellent scholarship that Palgrave's Health, Technology, and Society Series has published since 2006, and reflects on how the field has developed over this time. As a collection of readings drawn from twenty-two books, it is organized around five themes: Innovation, Responsibility, Locus of Care, Knowledge Production, and Regulation and Governance. Structured in this way, the book gives the reader a concise but nonetheless rich guide to the core issues and debates within the field. Complementing these narratives, the original authors have provided new reflection pieces on their texts and on their current work. This then is a book which in part looks back but also looks forward to emerging issues at the intersection of health, technology, and society. It uniquely encompasses and presents a range of expertise in a novel way that is both timely and accessible for students and others new to the field.

This book explores Native American literary responses to biomedical discourses and biomedicalization processes as they circulate in social and cultural contexts. Native American communities resist reductivism of biomedicine that excludes Indigenous (and non-Western) epistemologies and instead draw attention to how illness, healing, treatment, and genetic research are socially constructed and dependent on inherently racialist thinking. This volume highlights how interventions into the hegemony of biomedicine are vigorously addressed in Native American literature. The book covers tuberculosis and diabetes epidemics, the emergence of Native American DNA, discoveries in biotechnology, and the problematics of a biomedical model of psychiatry. The book analyzes work by Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie, LeAnne Howe, Linda Hogan, Heid E. Erdrich, Elissa Washuta and Frances Washburn. The book will appeal to scholars of Native American and Indigenous Studies, as well as to others with an interest in literature and medicine.

Animal cells present an extreme variability in their shapes in relation to their physiological properties. For instance, fibroblastic cells are tightly attached to the extra-cellular matrix and display a flattened, spindle-shaped morphology. Neuronal cells self-organize as a network through a complex branching of dendrites and a long axonal extension. Resting peripheral blood lymphocytes are poorly adhesive and maintain a spherical, smooth shape, while macroph- ages produce many pseudopodal extensions involved in the recognition of foreign molecules. In addition to the variability of the morphology of the cells that constitute different organs, many cell types also modify dynamically their morphology in response to environmental changes, leading to differential cell motility, migration, adhesion, polarity or intercellular contacts. This wide plasticity of cell morphology is promoted and maintained by the cytoskeleton, which is composed of the three interconnected actin micro filaments, tubulin microtubules and intermediate filaments networks, all capable of assembly and disassembly. Over the past few years, the Rho family of Ras-like GTPases emerged as key proteins that mediate extracellular signalling pathways leading to the forma- tion of polymerized actin-containing structures such as ruffles, lamellipodia and filopodia. Since the discovery of the first member RhoA in 1985, 13 mem- bers have so far been characterized in human cells. Most of Rho proteins are highly conserved between species as distant as yeast, slime mold, insects and mammals, which points to their fundamental role in cellular physiology.

Modern medicine has penetrated Bedouin tribes in the course of rapid urbanization and education, but when serious illnesses strike, particularly in the case of incurable diseases, even educated people turn to traditional medicine for a remedy. Over the course of 30 years, the author gathered data on traditional Bedouin medicine among pastoral-nomadic, semi-nomadic, and settled tribes. Based on interviews with healers, clients, and other active participants in treatments, this book will contribute to renewed thinking about a synthesis between traditional and modern medicine - to their reciprocal enrichment.

Humans are at a unique crossroads: never before have we had such a clear understanding of how our actions affect a changing climate, or how our settlement patterns along coastal environments put us at risk of rising sea levels. However, the science behind climate change (and solutions for it) are engulfed in political controversy. Dr. Christensen uses anthropological methods to illuminate the lived experience of families caring for elder relatives during climate related events: a unique conundrum facing increasing numbers of people living in coastal areas. As populations in industrialized countries grow older, they become more vulnerable to climate extremes. People over 65 are more likely to die in climate related events, such as heatwaves, hurricanes, and blizzards. Dr. Christensen presents the scientific evidence for climate change, the archaeological record on how humans responded to climatic shifts in the past, and explains how the current challenges are different. Using the theoretical framework of Singer's Syndemics, she explores how aging bodies are more vulnerable to increased environmental toxins, which is further exacerbated by climate fluctuations. A central question is: how do we value our environment, our elders, and make decisions about well-being throughout the life course?