"...It is well-written and well-referenced...this is an important, innovative, enjoyable textbook which can be highly recommended for use in undergraduate and postgraduate sociology courses on health related subjects, and which will be of value in courses on women's studies and gender. It will also be of interest to inquiring health care practitioners of whatever persuasion." - Sociology "This book takes a bold step in pointing new directions for sociological and social-historical studies of health and health care." - Social History of Medicine Throughout the book, the division of labour in health care, especially as it relates to social class and gender divisions, is taken as central. Its particular characteristic, and one that distinguishes it from other texts in this field, is that feminist critiques of health care are considered alongside the mainstream writing in the social history of medicine, and in medical sociology. Part I takes an historical approach to the types of healing knowledge, the modes of treatment, and the organization of health care found in Europe over the last four hundred years. Part II is a sociological analysis of contemporary health care covering concepts of health and illness, the organization of the National Health Service, the division of labour, the impact of international capitalism, and the issues at stake in arguments about human reproduction.

Acts of public defiance towards biomedical public health policies have occurred throughout modern history, from resistance to early smallpox vaccines in 19th-century Britain and America to more recent intransigence to efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak in Central and West Africa. Thinking through Resistance examines a diverse range of case studies of opposition to biomedical public health policies - from resistance to HPV vaccinations in Texas to disputes over HIV prevention research in Malawi - to assess the root causes of opposition. It is argued that far from being based on ignorance, resistance instead serves as a form of advocacy, calling for improvements in basic health-care delivery alongside expanded access to infrastructure and basic social services. Building on this argument, the authors set out an alternative to the current technocratic approach to global public health, extending beyond greater distribution of medical technologies to build on the perspectives of a political economy of health. With contributions from medical anthropologists, sociologists, and public health experts, Thinking through Resistance makes important reading for researchers, students, and practitioners in the fields of public health, medical anthropology, and public policy.

Acts of public defiance towards biomedical public health policies have occurred throughout modern history, from resistance to early smallpox vaccines in 19th-century Britain and America to more recent intransigence to efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak in Central and West Africa. Thinking through Resistance examines a diverse range of case studies of opposition to biomedical public health policies - from resistance to HPV vaccinations in Texas to disputes over HIV prevention research in Malawi - to assess the root causes of opposition. It is argued that far from being based on ignorance, resistance instead serves as a form of advocacy, calling for improvements in basic health-care delivery alongside expanded access to infrastructure and basic social services. Building on this argument, the authors set out an alternative to the current technocratic approach to global public health, extending beyond greater distribution of medical technologies to build on the perspectives of a political economy of health. With contributions from medical anthropologists, sociologists, and public health experts, Thinking through Resistance makes important reading for researchers, students, and practitioners in the fields of public health, medical anthropology, and public policy.

Beautyscapes explores the global phenomenon of international medical travel, focusing on patient-consumers seeking cosmetic surgery outside their home country and on those who enable them to access treatment abroad, including surgeons and facilitators. It documents the journeys of those who travel for treatment abroad, as well as the nature and power relations of the IMT industry. Empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated, Beautyscapes draws on key themes of interest to students and researchers interested in globalisation and mobility to explain the nature and growing popularity of cosmetic surgery tourism. Richly illustrated with ethnographic material and with the voices of those directly involved in cosmetic surgery tourism, Beautyscapes explores cosmetic surgery journeys from Australia and China to East-Asia and from the UK to Europe and North Africa. -- .

At Ansha's takes the reader inside the spirit mosque of a female healer in Nampula, northern Mozambique. It is here that Ansha, a Makonde spirit healer, heals the resisting ailments of her patients, discloses pieces of her story of affliction and healing, and engages the world outside her mosque. We come to know Ansha’s experiences as revolutionary and migrant, her religious trajectories, family, the healers who cured her, the spirits who possessed her, and her declining health. We follow Ansha’s shifts in her life and work in the mosque as these intersect with the visible and invisible borders of Mozambique and of its fraught history. Confronting events in her life and in the mosque between 2009 and 2016, Ansha invites us to make meaning with her, as we sit in her mosque, and engage with her family, spirits, friends, patients, and world.

What is illness? Is it a physiological dysfunction, a social label, or a way of experiencing the world? How do the physical, social, and emotional worlds of a person change when they become ill? Can there be well-being within illness? In this remarkable and thought-provoking book, Havi Carel explores these questions by weaving together the personal story of her own illness with insights and reflections drawn from her work as a philosopher. Carel's fresh approach to illness raises some uncomfortable questions about how we all - whether healthcare professionals or not - view the ill, challenging us to become more thoughtful. Illness unravels the tension between the universality of illness and its intensely private, often lonely, nature. It offers a new way of looking at a matter that affects every one of us. Revised and updated throughout, the third edition of this groundbreaking volume includes a new chapter on organ transplantation. Illness: The Cry of the Flesh will prove essential reading to those studying philosophy, medical ethics, and medical anthropology, as well as those in the healthcare and medical professions. It will also be of interest to individuals who live with illness, and their friends and families.

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.

The book provides researchers, students, and practitioners in public health, anthropology, and related fields with a brief introduction to a health-care model, Community Participatory Involvement (CPI), which for 20 years has proved successful in fighting global health problems. CPI differs from other community-based models in that it involves a unique synergy of local, civil, and political authorities. Using a South American cholera epidemic as an example, the book -explains in step-by-step detail how the CPI model is used;-includes teaching activities, a list of important tools, and model workshops;-demonstrates how the CPI model can be replicated to deal with a diverse range of public concerns, from the control of infectious diseases to animal husbandry to teacher education.

The book provides researchers, students, and practitioners in public health, anthropology, and related fields with a brief introduction to a health-care model, Community Participatory Involvement (CPI), which for 20 years has proved successful in fighting global health problems. CPI differs from other community-based models in that it involves a unique synergy of local, civil, and political authorities. Using a South American cholera epidemic as an example, the book -explains in step-by-step detail how the CPI model is used;-includes teaching activities, a list of important tools, and model workshops;-demonstrates how the CPI model can be replicated to deal with a diverse range of public concerns, from the control of infectious diseases to animal husbandry to teacher education.

Psychiatric Encounters presents an intimate portrait of a public inpatient psychiatric facility in the Southeastern state of Yucatan, Mexico. The book explores the experiences of patients and psychiatrists as they navigate the challenges of public psychiatric care in Mexico. While international reports condemning conditions in Mexican psychiatric institutions abound, Psychiatric Encounters considers the large- and small-scale obstacles to quality care encountered by doctors and patients alike as they struggle to live and act like human beings under inhumane conditions. Beatriz Mireya Reyes-Foster closely examines the impact of the Mexican state's neoliberal health reforms on how patients access care and doctors perform their duties. Engaging with madness, modernity, and identity, Psychiatric Encounters considers the enduring role of colonialism in the context of Mexico's troubled contemporary mental health care institutions.

A New Scientist Best Book of 2020 How is it that a baboon and a blob of slime mould instinctively know what to eat for optimal health, balancing their protein, fat and carb intake in perfect proportions? In new, groundbreaking research that is transforming our understanding of nutrition, animals from locusts to lions and yes, humans too, demonstrate the remarkable science behind appetite. Appetite communicates the body's nutritional needs to the brain, and eating in accordance with your body's demands, like the animals, should ensure optimal health, but the modern fast food world wreaks havoc on this evolutionarily honed system. In several landmark studies, Raubenheimer and Simpson prove that appetite can be hacked – we can eat for optimal health, for increased fertility or for a longer lifespan. Understanding the science of the appetite offers tremendous power in shaping our bodies and controlling our lives. ** Previously published as Eat Like the Animals **

This collection brings together three generations of medical anthropologists working at European universities to reflect on past, current and future directions of the field. Medical anthropology emerged on an international playing ground, and while other recently compiled anthologies emphasize North American developments, this volume highlights substantial ethnographic and theoretical studies undertaken in Europe. The first four chapters trace the beginnings of medical anthropology back into the two formative decades between the 1950s-1970s in Italy, German-speaking Europe, the Netherlands, France and the UK, supported by four brief vignettes on current developments. Three core themes that emerged within this field in Europe - the practice of care, the body politic and psycho-sensorial dimensions of healing - are first presented in synopsis and then separately discussed by three leading medical anthropologists Susan Whyte, Giovanni Pizza and Rene Devisch, complemented by the work of three early career researchers. The chapters aim to highlight how very diverse (and sometimes overlooked) European developments within this rapidly growing field have been, and continue to be. This book will spur reflection on medical anthropology's potential for future scholarship and practice, by students and established scholars alike. This book was originally published as a special issue of Anthropology and Medicine.

Over the course of the past thirty years, there has been an explosion of work on sexuality, both conceptually and methodologically. From a relatively limited, specialist field, the study of sexuality has expanded across a wide range of social sciences. Yet as the field has grown, it has become apparent that a number of leading edge critical issues remain. This theory-building book explores some of the areas in which there is major and continuing debate, for example, about the relationship between sexuality and gender; about the nature and status of heterosexuality; about hetero- and homo-normativity; about the influence and intersection of class, race, age and other factors in sexual trajectories, identities and lifestyles; and about how best to understand the new forms of sexuality that are emerging in both rich world and developing world contexts. With contributions from leading and new scholars and activists from across the globe, this book highlights tensions or 'flash-points' in contemporary debate, and offers some innovative ways forward in terms of thinking about sexuality - both theoretically and with respect to policy and programme development. An extended essay by Henrietta Moore introduces the volume, and an afterword by Jeffrey Weeks offers pointers for the future. The contributors bring together a range of experiences and a variety of disciplinary perspectives in engaging with three key themes of sexual subjectivity and global transformations, sexualities in practice, and advancing new thinking on sexuality in policy and programmatic contexts. It is of interest to students, researchers and activists in sexuality, sexual health and gender studies, especially those working from public health, sociological and anthropological perspectives.

Miscarriage is a significant women's health issue. Research has consistently shown that one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage. This collected volume explores miscarriage in diverse historical and cultural settings with contributions from anthropologists, historians and medical professionals. Contributors use rich ethnographic and historical material to discuss how pregnancy loss is managed and negotiated in a range of societies. The book considers meanings attached to miscarriage and how religious, cultural, medical and legal forces impact the way miscarriage is experienced and perceived.

Psychiatric Encounters presents an intimate portrait of a public inpatient psychiatric facility in the Southeastern state of Yucatan, Mexico. The book explores the experiences of patients and psychiatrists as they navigate the challenges of public psychiatric care in Mexico. While international reports condemning conditions in Mexican psychiatric institutions abound, Psychiatric Encounters considers the large- and small-scale obstacles to quality care encountered by doctors and patients alike as they struggle to live and act like human beings under inhumane conditions. Beatriz Mireya Reyes-Foster closely examines the impact of the Mexican state's neoliberal health reforms on how patients access care and doctors perform their duties. Engaging with madness, modernity, and identity, Psychiatric Encounters considers the enduring role of colonialism in the context of Mexico's troubled contemporary mental health care institutions.

At face value, this book is about medicine in Cambodia over the last hundred years. At the same time, however, by using 'medicine' (in the sense of ideas, practices and institutions relating to health and illness) as a prism through which to view colonial and post-colonial Cambodian society more generally, it offers an historical and contemporary anthropology of the nation of Cambodia. Rich in ethnographic detail derived from both contemporary anthropological fieldwork and colonial archival material, the study is an account of the simultaneous presence in Cambodia of two medical traditions: the modern, biomedical one first introduced by the French colonial power at the turn of the twentieth century, and the indigenous Khmer health cosmology. In their reliance on one or the other of the two traditions, to a large extent the Khmer people have been concerned to find efficient medical treatment that also adheres to social norms (not least the emphasis on the morality of social relations). This concern is also evident in the prevailing medical pluralism in Cambodia today. The authors trace the interaction (and lack thereof) between these two traditions from the French colonial period via the political upheavals of the 1970s through to the present day. The result is more than a medical anthropology; this is a key text that also makes a significant contribution to the anthropological study of Cambodian society at large and will be an important resource for development planners and aid workers in medical and related fields.

Minority populations are often regarded as being 'hard to reach' and evading state expectations of health protection. This ethnographic and archival study analyses how devout Jews in Britain negotiate healthcare services to preserve the reproduction of culture and continuity. This book demonstrates how the transformative and transgressive possibilities of technology reveal multiple pursuits of protection between this religious minority and the state. Making Bodies Kosher advances theoretical perspectives of immunity, and sits at the intersection of medical anthropology, social history and the study of religions.

This new edition of Health Studies provides an authoritative and contemporary introduction to the study of health. With chapters including epidemiology, psychology, human and environmental geography, and anthropology, it is the only book to explore in one volume all of the core disciplines that contribute to understanding health. It illustrates how the complexity of health problems such as obesity should be viewed with an interdisciplinary perspective. Each chapter explains the disciplinary approach and then its theoretical and research approaches with examples. A highlight of this 4th edition is a new chapter on sports and exercise science providing another scientific chapter on physiology which is applied and will be of interest to all those thinking of employment in sports or leisure industry. The book is accessible and learner-centered and each chapter features: a connections feature that links the chapters together; learning tasks; questions for reflection and debate; examples to illustrate concepts, methodologies and to explore contemporary issues; a case study on obesity, food and diet. Comprehensive, accessible and written by leading experts in the different fields, this is the introductory text for all students of health studies.

On the Origin of Species caused an uproar when it was first published in 1859. Darwin's theory was that species had evolved from simpler organisms by natural selection acting upon the variability of populations. This view was directly opposed to the doctrine of special creation by God and angered the Church and Victorian public opinion. This volume is a facsimile of one of the original copies sent to the eminent geologist Leonard Horner. The volume also includes sample pages from Darwin's original handwritten manuscript; the exclusive property of the Natural History Museum.

This book explores what anthropology can contribute to an understanding of how people live through pandemics. It reflects on how pandemics are experienced and what we can learn from Covid-19 as well as previous instances that might inform future responses and help to alleviate suffering. The chapters highlight current research and longer-term reflections from different countries and areas of the discipline, covering medical anthropology, care and surveillance, digital and experimental ethnography, and the everyday economies of lockdown. They show the breadth and originality of anthropological work relevant to thinking about and responding to pandemic situations. Extending beyond Covid-19, the volume considers the implications for ongoing and future research under pandemic restrictions and gives a broad overview of current anthropology relevant to questions about pandemics. It will be of interest to both academic and applied anthropologists, as well as to sociologists and those working in global and public health.

What is it about childhood experiences that influence the kind of adult we become? For John Bowlby and others who developed Attachment theory, much of the answer lies in the quality of early attachments to our primary caregivers. When those attachments are secure, we can develop a safe sense of self. When insecure, we may go on seeking safety throughout our lives, in inappropriate and painful ways. Attachment, argued Bowlby, is a matter for individual and species survival.Using principles pioneered by Bowlby, this volume explores the importance of attachments to individuals and communities. Drawing on the work of leading figures in the field of Attachment research and clinical practice, this book introduces readers to the basic ideas and applications of Attachment theory. Chapters explore, for example, the role of attachment experience in brain development, the cultural and institutional contexts in which attachment systems operate, the political consequences of personal suffering and the uses of Attachment theory in psychotherapy.

"Deep China" investigates the emotional and moral lives of the Chinese people as they adjust to the challenges of modernity. Sharing a medical anthropology and cultural psychiatry perspective, Arthur Kleinman, Yunxiang Yan, Jing Jun, Sing Lee, Everett Zhang, Pan Tianshu, Wu Fei, and Guo Jinhua delve into intimate and sometimes hidden areas of personal life and social practice to observe and narrate the drama of Chinese individualization. The essays explore the remaking of the moral person during China's profound social and economic transformation, unraveling the shifting practices and struggles of contemporary life.

Understanding one's health conditions plays a key role in a patient's response to illness, influencing stress levels and the likelihood of following treatment regimens and advice. Thus, the explanation of illness is a critical component of the interactions between health care providers and their patients. Emphasizing these exchanges and their potential for improving health and well being, Bryan B. Whaley has assembled this collection to serve both as a foundation for further research on explaining illness and as a resource for provider-patient interaction.
Contributors from the communication and health care disciplines examine the purpose and methods of explaining illness, as well as the role that illness explanations play in framing and reframing meaning and uncertainty regarding one's health welfare. Including theoretical, developmental, and cultural factors, the elegance of this book is the richness in the differences among populations and communication strategies, and the articulation of the intricacies of language, illness, and culture in the explanations.
As a resource for scholars and students of communication, medicine, nursing, public health, social work, and related areas, this volume establishes a benchmark from which to examine and evaluate current theory and strategies in explaining illness, and to launch systematic research endeavors. Health practitioners will also find the book invaluable in their exchanges with their patients, as a unique source of information on the factors influencing the explanation of illness.

Key Features: 1. Offers new perspectives beyond the topic area of infection prevention and control, to push the frontiers of knowledge and to challenge the status quo. 2. Interprofessional in nature and relevant to all those involved in the provision of medicine, health, and social care irrespective of their roles. 3. Truly international in nature in that the chapters have been developed by a range of individuals from across the globe.

This book takes a historical and anthropological approach to understanding how non-human hosts and vectors of diseases are understood, at a time when emerging infectious diseases are one of the central concerns of global health. The volume critically examines the ways in which animals have come to be framed as 'epidemic villains' since the turn of the nineteenth century. Providing epistemological and social histories of non-human epidemic blame, as well as ethnographic perspectives on its recent manifestations, the essays explore this cornerstone of modern epidemiology and public health alongside its continuing importance in today's world. Covering diverse regions, the book argues that framing animals as spreaders and reservoirs of infectious diseases - from plague to rabies to Ebola - is an integral aspect not only to scientific breakthroughs but also to the ideological and biopolitical apparatus of modern medicine. As the first book to consider the impact of the image of non-human disease hosts and vectors on medicine and public health, it offers a major contribution to our understanding of human-animal interaction under the shadow of global epidemic threat.