Synopsis
The third edition of Introducing Medical Anthropology: A Discipline in Action, provides students with a first exposure to the growing field of medical and health anthropology. The narrative is guided by unifying themes. First, health-oriented anthropologists are very involved in the process of helping, to varying degrees, to change the world around them through their work in applied projects, policy initiatives, and advocacy. Second, the authors present the fundamental importance of culture and social relationships in health and illness by demonstrating that illness and disease involve complex biosocial processes and that resolving them requires attention to a range of factors beyond biology. Third, through an examination of the issue of health inequality, this book underlines the need for an analysis that moves beyond cultural or even ecological models of health toward a comprehensive biosocial approach. Such an approach integrates biological, cultural, and social factors in building unified theoretical understandings of the origin of ill health, while contributing to the building of effective and equitable national health-care systems.
NEW TO THIS EDITION
All chapters have been updated or expanded.NEW: Chapter 8, “The Biopolitics of Life: Biotechnology, Biocapital, and Bioethics.”•Revised text style for crisper language and livelier phrasing.Added a brief signposting of chapter content at the beginning of each chapter and reviewquestions about the key issues and concepts at the end of each chapter.Expanded discussion of Zika, Ebola, gender and health, PTSD and psychological anthropol-ogy, geriatric health, the contemporary vaccine controversy, the internet and health, and thehealth impacts of fracking and nuclear energy development.Concluding chapter examines anthropologically informed strategies and visions for a health-ier world.
About the Authors
Merrill Singer is professor emeritus in the Departments of Anthropology and Community Medicine at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Singer has published 290 scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters, and has authored, co-authored or edited thirty-three books. His research and writing have addressed syndemics, HIV/AIDS and STDs in highly vulnerable and disadvantaged populations, illicit drug use and drinking behavior, infectious disease, community and structural violence, and the political ecology of health, including the health consequences of climate change. Dr. Singer has been awarded the Rudolph Virchow Professional Prize, the George Foster Memorial Award for Practicing Anthropology, both the AIDS and Anthropology Research Group's Distinguished Service Award and its Clark Taylor Professional Paper Prize, the Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America, and the Solon T. Kimball Award for Public and Applied Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association.
Debbi Long is an honorary senior lecturer in the Wollotuka Institute (Indigenous Studies) at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She is a critical health anthropologist and a pioneer of hospital ethnography in Australia. She has undertaken health ethnography in Turkey, Eswatini, and in a variety of public hospital contexts in Australia, including maternity, spinal, intensive care and dialysis units. She has worked as a consultant in clinical organization and management on projects including quality improvement, patient safety, behaviour change, and in industrial relations contexts. Other research includes family violence education and workplace injury compensation analysis. She has taught at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in anthropology departments, international development programs, medical, nursing and allied health programs and in Indigenous studies. including foundation and support programs. Debbi is a qualified Permaculture designer and educator, and recent projects involve a focus on food security, circular economies and sustainable building, heavily informed by traditional Indigenous knowledges.
Alex Pavlotski works as a health anthropologist at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne. He specializes in using visual methods in research, co-design methodologies, ethnography, and anthropological teaching. Alex has worked in teaching and research with LaTrobe University, the University of Auckland, the University of Melbourne, and Monash University.
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