Navigating Digital Health Landscapes explores how users navigate the internet when searching for health information. It is the first book to conceptualise the internet as a landscape and the ways in which people navigate this digital world, including the complex entanglements between on and offline domains. It does so through a range of disciplinary perspectives from expert contributors across STS (science and technology studies), social anthropology, biomedicine, ethics and law, linguistics, social policy and computer scientists working in more technical aspects of tracking and visualising data and information on the internet. The book provides a unique and valuable contribution for those wishing to understand how digital technologies are affecting the design, implementation and use of digital systems to manage health information in different contexts.

COVID-19: Proportionality, Public Policy and Social Distance explores the social and political response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It details the sociological aspects of the spread of the virus, the role played by social distancing in virus mitigation, and the comparative effect of social proximity and distance on national anti-viral behavior. Peter Murphy discusses various public policy approaches to the pandemic and their successes and failures. In this engaging analysis, he investigates the way that contemporary societies think about risk, threat and harm, and how social mood affected the response to COVID-19.

This book observes the idea of race as a false representation for the cause of disease. Race-based medicine, an emerging field in pharmacology, aims to create a specialty market based on racial groups. Within this market, the drug BiDil set a precedent in this area of medicine targeting African Americans as its first racial group. Consequently, selecting African Americans as a "starter group" led to ethical questions regarding the motive behind race-based medicine within the context of the larger treatment of blacks in American medical history. This book therefore links medicine and American eugenics, examines race-based medicine's influence on the perception of the black body, traces the influence of BiDil's approval on the resurgence of race-based medicine, and assesses the black church's response to race-based medicine using black liberation theology as a means to social justice.

Recent work in the mobilities literature has highlighted the importance of thinking about mobility and immobility as a continuum, where movement intersects with processes that might entail episodes of transition, waiting, emptiness, and fixity. This focus on stillness, things that are stuck, incomplete or in a state of transition can point to new theoretical, methodological and practical dimensions in social studies of medicine. This edited volume brings the concept of immobility to the forefront of social studies of medicine to explore how immobility shapes processes of medical care and the theoretical and methodological challenges of studying immobility in medical contexts. The authors in this volume draw from a wide range of case studies across the globe to make contributions to our current understanding of health, illness and medicine, mobilities and immobilities. Chapter 2 "Lists in Flux, Lives on Hold? Technologies of Waiting in Liver Transplant Medicine" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

A narrative ethnography about a Ugandan woman and her relatives, this novelistic, fine-grained volume shows how global questions of responsibility and inequity travel in family networks and confront people with decisions about life and death. It is a story of existence under extremely challenging conditions, about belonging and marginalization, about the opacity and ambiguity of social relations, and about growing up in a country haunted by violence and civil war only to be later lifted by optimism and devastated anew by the AIDS epidemic. The story draws on long-term fieldwork and letters from the woman who takes centre stage in the story, while at once providing unique and privileged insight into the ethical challenges of a research method that demands personal involvement that is ultimately withdrawn for scholarly analysis.

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 examines how pacemakers and defibrillators participate in transforming life and death in high-tech societies. In both popular and medical accounts, these internal devices are often portrayed as almost magical technologies. Once implanted in bodies, they do not require any 'user' agency. In this unique and timely book, Nelly Oudshoorn argues that any discourse or policy assuming a passive role for people living with these implants silences the fact that keeping cyborg bodies alive involves their active engagement. Pacemakers and defibrillators not only act as potentially life-saving technologies, but simultaneously transform the fragility of bodies by introducing new vulnerabilities. Oudshoorn offers a fascinating examination of what it takes to become a resilient cyborg, and in the process develops a valuable new sociology of creating 'resilient' cyborgs.

The Human Embryo in vitro explores the ways in which UK law engages with embryonic processes under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 (as amended), the intellectual basis of which has not been reconsidered for almost thirty years. McMillan argues that in regulating 'the embryo' - that is, a processual liminal entity in itself - the law is regulating for uncertainty. This book offers a fuller understanding of how complex biological processes of development and growth can be better aligned with a legal framework that purports to pay respect to the embryo while also allowing its destruction. To do so it employs an anthropological concept, liminality, which is itself concerned with revealing the dynamics of process. The implications of this for contemporary regulation of artificial reproduction are fully explored, and recommendations are offered for international regimes on how they can better align biological reality with social policy and law.

This book provides an ethnographic account of the ways in which biomedicine, as a part of the modernization of healthcare, has been localized and established as the culturally dominant medical system in rural Bangladesh. Dr Faruk Shah offers an anthropological critique of biomedicine in rural Bangladesh that explains how the existing social inequalities and disparities in healthcare are intensified by the practices undertaken in biomedical health centres through the healthcare bureaucracy and local gendered politics. This work of villagers' healthcare practices leads to a fascinating analysis of the local healthcare bureaucracy, corruption, structural violence, commodification of health, pharmaceutical promotional strategies and gender discrimination in population control. Shah argues that biomedicine has already achieved cultural authority and acceptability at almost all levels of the health sector in Bangladesh. However, in this system healthcare bureaucracy is shaped by social capital, power relations and kin networks, and corruption is a central element of daily care practices.

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.

Unpacking assumptions about corseting, Rebecca Gibson supplements narratives of corseted women from the 18th and 19th centuries with her seminal work on corset-related skeletal deformation. An undergarment that provided support and shape for centuries, the corset occupies a familiar but exotic space in modern consciousness, created by two sometimes contradictory narrative arcs: the texts that women wrote regarding their own corseting experiences and the recorded opinions of the medical community during the 19th century. Combining these texts with skeletal age data and rib and vertebrae measurements from remains at St. Bride's parish London dating from 1700 to 1900, the author discusses corseting in terms of health and longevity, situates corseting as an everyday practice that crossed urban socio-economic boundaries, and attests to the practice as part of normal female life during the time period Gibson's bioarchaeology of binding is is the first large-scalar, multi-site bioethnography of the corseted woman.

This book addresses how skeletons can inform us about behavior by describing skeletal lesions in the Gombe chimpanzees, relating them to known life histories whenever possible, and analyzing demographic patterns in the sample. This is of particular interest to both primatologists and skeletal analysts who have benefited from published data on a smaller, earlier skeletal sample from Gombe. The Gombe skeletal collection is the largest collection of wild chimpanzees with known life histories in existence, and this work significantly expands the skeletal sample from this long-term research site (49 chimpanzees). The book explores topics of general interest to skeletal analysts such as demographic patterns, which injuries leave signs on the skeleton, and rates of healing, and discusses both qualitative and quantitative analysis of the patterning of lesions. The book presents the data in a narrative style similar to that employed in Dr. Goodall's seminal work The Chimpanzees of Gombe. Readers already familiar with the Gombe chimpanzees are likely to appreciate summaries of life events correlated to observable skeletal features. The book is especially relevant at this time to remind primate conservationists of the importance of the isolated chimpanzee population at Gombe National Park as well as the availability of the skeletons for study, both within the park itself as well as at the University of Minnesota.

This book paints a comprehensive portrait of Mexico's system of assisted reproduction first from a historical perspective, then from a more contemporary viewpoint. Based on a detailed analysis of books and articles published between the 1950s and 1980s, the first section tells the story of how the epistemic, normative, and material infrastructure of the assisted reproduction system was built. It traces the professionalization process of assisted reproduction as a medical field and the establishment of its professional association. Drawing on ethnographic material, the second part looks at how this system developed and flourished from the 1980s up to 2010, its commercialization process, how the expansion of reproductive services took place, and the messages regarding reproductive technologies that circulated within a wide discursive landscape. Given its scope and methods, this book will appeal to scholars interested in science and technology studies, reproduction studies, history of medicine, medical anthropology, and sociology.

This book is an attempt to understand suicide from the perspective of a group of men who decided to take their own lives. Their stories imply that male suicide is not, as frequently portrayed, an impulsive action arising from particular, sex-specific, causes but relates to a cluster of interlinked issues which accumulate over time. These issues were not distinctively male concerns but were connected to gender in that the men's difficulties were exacerbated by the existence of an emotional culture which inhibited males from expressing specific feelings. The prevailing form of masculinity impeded them in developing knowledge of, and speaking about, their emotional needs and from accessing help and this prolonged their suffering and made suicide a possibility. These men produced compelling accounts of their emotional pain which belied notions of male inexpressiveness but the findings point to a link between emotionally constraining cultures and suicidal behaviour for some groups of men.

This book investigates the ways in which context shapes how cognitive challenges and strengths are navigated and how these actions impact the self-esteem of individuals with dementia and their conversational partners. The author examines both the language used and face maintenance in everyday social interaction through the lens of epistemic discourse analysis. In doing so, this work reveals how changes in cognition may impact the faces of these individuals, leading some to feel ashamed, anxious, or angry, others to feel patronized, infantilized, or overly dependent, and still others to feel threatened in both ways. It further examines how discursive choices made by healthy interactional partners can minimize or exacerbate these feelings. This path-breaking work will provide important insights for students and scholars of sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, medical anthropology, and health communication.

The Hadza, an ethnic group indigenous to northern Tanzania, are one of the few remaining hunter-gatherer populations. Archaeology shows 130,000 years of hunting and gathering in their land but Hadza are rapidly losing areas vital to their way of life. This book offers a unique opportunity to capture a disappearing lifestyle. Blurton Jones interweaves data from ecology, demography and evolutionary ecology to present a comprehensive analysis of the Hadza foragers. Discussion centres on expansion of the adaptationist perspective beyond topics customarily studied in human behavioural ecology, to interpret a wider range of anthropological concepts. Analysing behavioural aspects, with a specific focus on relationships and their wider impact on the population, this book reports the demographic consequences of different patterns of marriage and the availability of helpers such as husbands, children, and grandmothers. Essential for researchers and graduate students alike, this book will challenge preconceptions of human sociobiology.

The lives of kings, poets, authors, criminals and celebrities are a perpetual fascination in the media and popular culture, and for decades anthropologists and other scientists have participated in 'post-mortem dissections' of the lives of historical figures. In this field of biohistory, researchers have identified and analyzed these figures' bodies using technologies such as DNA fingerprinting, biochemical assays, and skeletal biology. This book brings together biohistorical case studies for the first time, and considers the role of the anthropologist in the writing of historical narratives surrounding the deceased. Contributors theorize biohistory with respect to the sociology of the body, examining the ethical implications of biohistorical work and the diversity of social theoretical perspectives that researchers' work may relate to. The volume defines scales of biohistorical engagement, providing readers with a critical sense of scale and the different paths to 'historical notoriety' that can emerge with respect to human remains.

This book explores the interaction between anthropology and humanitarianism, focussed on the organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). The emphasis of the collection is on practising anthropology within humanitarian situations, reflecting on how anthropology contributes to the development of operational response. Each chapter presents an experience of working within a particular MSF project and highlights the real issues that anthropologists of humanitarian practice confront. The volume will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, development studies and global health, as well as to NGO staff and health professionals.

Affective Health and Masculinities in South Africa explores how different masculinities modulate substance use, interpersonal violence, suicidality, and AIDS as well as recovery cross-culturally. With a focus on three male protagonists living in very distinct urban areas of Cape Town, this comparative ethnography shows that men's struggles to become invulnerable increase vulnerability. Through an analysis of masculinities as social assemblages, the study shows how affective health problems are tied to modern individualism rather than African 'tradition' that has become a cliche in Eurocentric gender studies. Affective health is conceptualized as a balancing act between autonomy and connectivity that after colonialism and apartheid has become compromised through the imperative of self-reliance. This book provides a rare perspective on young men's vulnerability in everyday life that may affect the reader and spark discussion about how masculinities in relationships shape physical and psychological health. Moreover, it shows how men change in the face of distress in ways that may look different than global health and gender-transformative approaches envision. Thick descriptions of actual events over the life course make the study accessible to both graduate and undergraduate students in the social sciences. Contributing to current debates on mental health and masculinity, this volume will be of interest to scholars from various disciplines including anthropology, gender studies, African studies, psychology, and global health.

This book represents the first multi-disciplinary introduction to the study of war crimes trials and investigations. It introduces readers to the numerous disciplines engaged with this complex subject, including: Forensic Anthropology, Economics and Anthropometrics, Legal History, Violence Studies, International Criminal Justice, International Relations, and Moral Philosophy. The contributors are experts in their respective fields and the chapters highlight each discipline's major trends, debates, methods and approaches to mass atrocity, genocide, and crimes against humanity, as well as their interactions with adjacent disciplines. Case studies illustrate how the respective disciplines work in practice, including examples from the Allied Hunger Blockade, WWII, the Guatemalan and Spanish Civil Wars, the Former Yugoslavia, and Uganda. Including bibliographical essays to offer readers crucial orientation when approaching the specialist literature in each case, this edited collection equips readers with what they need to know in order to navigate a complex, and until now, deeply fragmented field. A diverse and interdisciplinary body of research, this book will be indispensable reading for scholars of war crimes.

Chronic diseases have rapidly become the leading global cause of morbidity and mortality, yet there is poor understanding of this transition, or why particular social and ethnic groups are especially susceptible. In this book, Wells adopts a multidisciplinary approach to human nutrition, emphasising how power relations shape the physiological pathways to obesity, diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Part I reviews the physiological basis of chronic diseases, presenting a 'capacity-load' model that integrates the nutritional contributions of developmental experience and adult lifestyle. Part II presents an evolutionary perspective on the sensitivity of human metabolism to ecological stresses, highlighting how social hierarchy impacts metabolism on an intergenerational timescale. Part III reviews how nutrition has changed over time, as societies evolved and coalesced towards a single global economic system. Part IV integrates these physiological, evolutionary and politico-economic perspectives in a unifying framework, to deepen our understanding of the societal basis of metabolic ill-health.

This book examines the future of birthing practices, particularly by focusing on epidural analgesia in childbirth. It describes historical and cultural trajectories that have shaped the way in which birth is understood in Western, developed nations. In setting out the nature of epidural history, knowledge and practice, the book delves into related birth practices within the hospital setting. By critically examining these practices, which are embedded in a scientific discourse that rationalises and relies upon technology use, the authors argue that epidural analgesia has been positioned as a safe technology in contemporary maternity culture, despite it carrying particular risks. In examining alternative research the book proposes that increasing epidural rates are not only due to greater pain relief requirements or access but are influenced by technocratic values and a fragmented maternity system. The authors outline the way in which this epidural discourse influences how information is presented to women and how this affects their choices around the use of pain relief in labour.

When a bone of unknown origin is found at a location, forensic implications arise immediately. Is this bone human, and if so, is it evidence of a murder? Human and Non-Human Bone Identification: A Color Atlas presents a comprehensive handbook of photographs and other information essential for law enforcement and forensic anthropologists when examining skeletal remains and determining species and body parts. Presenting over 3000 color photographs, this atlas is a practical comparative guide to the differences among species for nearly all bones in the body. Useful in either the laboratory or the field, it features images of the types of bones that are most commonly discovered, and provides annotations pointing out salient features. The book begins with a section on general osteology and explains the major anatomical differences between humans and other animals. It compares human and non-human bones, categorized by type of bone, and includes most of the major bones in humans and non-humans. The third section discusses non-human skeletal elements, categorized by species, and explores numerous skeletal elements within those species. This book is also available on a fully searchable DVD: Catalog no. 62964 Includes Bones from the Following Species! Moose Elk Deer Bison Cow Antelope Mountain Sheep Domestic Sheep Llama Horse Bear Wolf Coyote Domestic dog Mountain lion Bobcat Raccoon Badger Skunk River Otter Beaver Porcupine Marmot Prairie dog Rabbit Norway rat Squirrel Armadillo Opossum Vampire bat Seal Written by Diane L. France, one of the most respected forensic anthropologists in the world, this supremely organized atlas helps those tasked with bone identification to quickly and efficiently determine the origin of discovered remains and plan the appropriate course of action.

Raising the Dust explores the relationship between human and ecological health through the lens of African traditional medicine, as practiced in the south of Malawi. The book employs an ethnographic methodology using the primary methods of semi-structured interviews and participant observation. The fieldwork for the research was conducted in the Mulanje Mountain Biosphere and the findings are presented as a narrative exploration of insider and outsider positions, in this context. The conceptual framework for the book encompasses a broad range of ecological ideas, focussing mainly on traditional ecological knowledge and radical ecology. The holistic theoretical framework for the book emerges in a grounded way from out of the fieldwork experience. The book is written in plain language and will appeal to anyone interested in holistic health outlooks, particularly cross-cultural health and wellbeing narratives.

This book takes a reproductive justice approach to argue that surrogacy as practised in the contemporary neoliberal biomarkets crosses the humanitarian thresholds of feminism. Drawing on her ethnographic work with surrogate mothers, intended parents and medical practitioners in India, the author shows the dark connections between poverty, gender, human rights violations and indignity in the surrogacy market. In a developing country like India, bio-technologies therefore create reproductive objects of certain female bodies while promoting an image of reproductive liberation for others. India is a classic example for how far these biomarkets can exploit vulnerabilities for individual requirements in the garb of reproductive liberty. This critical book refers to a range of liberal, radical and postcolonial feminist frameworks on surrogacy, and questions the individual reproductive rights perspective as an approach to examine global surrogacy. It introduces 'humanitarian feminism' as an alternative concept to bridge feminist factions divided on contextual and ideological grounds. It hopes to build a global feminist solidarity drawing on a 'reproductive justice' approach by recognizing the histories of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, age and immigration oppression in all communities. This work is of interest to researchers and students of medical sociology and anthropology, gender studies, bioethics, and development studies.