Health, illness or addiction: social aspects Books

Book SynopsisIn Prescription for the People, Fran Quigley diagnoses our inability to get medicines to the people who need them and then prescribes the cure. He delivers a clear and convincing argument for a complete shift in the global and U.S. approach to developing and providing essential medicinesand a primer on how to make that change happen. Globally, 10 million people die each year because they are unable to pay for medicines that would save them. The cost of prescription drugs is bankrupting families and putting a strain on state and federal budgets. Patients' desperate need for affordable medicines clashes with the core business model of the powerful pharmaceutical industry, which maximizes profits whenever possible. It doesn't have to be this way. Patients and activists are aiming to make all essential medicines affordable by reclaiming medicines as a public good and a human right, instead of a profit-making commodity. In this book, Quigley demystifies statistics and termiTrade ReviewExplores the reasons behind high prescription drug costs and the consequences of those costs for individuals, drug companies, and governments.... Easy-to-read short chapters. Many references from top journals and government documents. * Choice *An accessible, empowering plea to act on a vital issue. * Library Journal *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Part I 1. People Everywhere Are Struggling to Get the Medicines They Need 2. The United States Has a Drug Problem 3. Millions of People Are Dying Needlessly 4. Cancer Patients Face Particularly Deadly Barriers to Medicines 5. The Current Medicine System Neglects Many Major Diseases Part II 6. Corporate Research and Development Investments Are Exaggerated 7. The Current System Wastes Billions on Drug Marketing 8. The Current System Compromises Physician Integrity and Leads to Unethical Corporate Behavior 9. Medicines Are Priced at Whatever the Market Will Bear 10. Pharmaceutical Corporations Reap History-Making Pro ts Part III 11. The For-Profit Medicine Arguments Are Patently False 12. Medicine Patents Are Extended Too Far and Too Wide 13. Patent Protectionism Stunts the Development of New Medicines 14. Governments, Not Private Corporations, Drive Medicine Innovation 15. Taxpayers and Patients Pay Twice for Patented Medicines Part IV 16. Medicines Are a Public Good 17. Medicine Patents Are Arti cial, Recent, and Government-Created 18. The United States and Big Pharma Play the Bully in Extending Patents 19. Pharma-Pushed Trade Agreements Steal the Power of Democratically Elected Governments Part V 20. Current Law Provides Opportunities for Affordable Generic Medicines 21. There Is a Better Way to Develop Medicines 22. Human Rights Law Demands Access to Essential Medicines Conclusion Notes Index

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Book SynopsisApproaching tobacco from the perspective of users, producers, and objectors, Smoking under the Tsars provides an unparalleled view of Russia's early adoption of smoking. Tricia Starks introduces us to the addictive, nicotine-soaked Russian version of the cigarettethe papirosaand the sensory, medical, social, cultural, and gendered consequences of this unique style of tobacco use.Starting with the papirosa's introduction in the nineteenth century and its foundation as a cultural and imperial construct, Starks situates the cigarette's emergence as a mass-use product of revolutionary potential. She discusses the papirosa as a moral and medical problem, tracks the ways in which it was marketed as a liberating object, and concludes that it has become a point of increasing conflict for users, reformers, and purveyors.The heavily illustrated Smoking under the Tsars taps into bountiful material in newspapers, industry publications, etiquette Trade ReviewWhat a curious, ambitious book! When I think of titles that will get readers hooked on Russia, this is what I envision. Smoking Under the Tsars is sprawling, drawing cultural anthropology, history, pubpol, and medicine (plus a little journalism) under the wing of RAS. * Russia Reviewed *Tricia Starks' book is well-written and lavishly illustrated and is an important contribution to the understanding of the manufacture, production, and role that tobacco had in late imperial and in the Revolutionary Russia. Particularly noteworthy is the level of detail that the author has provided on all these topics. This book is highly recommended for anyone interested in any aspect of smoking or the tobacco industry in Russia during the periods discussed. * International Journal of Russian Studies *The history of tobacco smoking and addiction described in Tricia Starks's lively new book Smoking Under the Tsars underscores how deeply ingrained the habit is in Russian history and culture and the difficulty the contemporary Russian state faces in trying to persuade more people to quit.... Fascinating. * American Journal of Public Health *Starks succeeds in cohesively examining an unconventional topic that will interest a wide audience interested in histories of consumer culture, the senses, women, medicine, and the public sphere before 1917. * Choice *[Smoking under the Tsars] offers readers a thick anthropological account of complex socialities created and maintained with a cigarette puff. * Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences *Should be on all graduate students' reading lists and, given their accessible and jargon-free writing styles, could easily be integrated in the undergraduate curriculum. * Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History *Starks is successful in inviting the reader to reconsider tobacco consumption as a form of national project during the late imperial period. Of interest to scholars of public health, gender, and marketing as well as historians, it is well worthy of a wide readership and an important addition to our understanding of the late imperial period. * The Russian Review *Starks carefully reviews advertisements, archival documents, maps, and individual narratives to generate an elegant and thorough account of the social life of smoking in prerevolutionary Russia. * Journal of the History of Medicine *Starks has put together a masterful monograph that weaves together the political, economic, social, and cultural history of smoking in Russia—no small feat. The prose is as vivid and engaging as the stunning, full-color, tsarist-era artwork. * MUSE *Nicely organized and beautifully illustrated with color reproductions of tobacco and cigarette ads, Smoking covers tobacco use in Russia before 1917 through cultivation of the plant, preparation and use of cigarettes, advertising and consumption, and early arguments pro and con lighting up. * Journal of Modern History *Smoking under the Tsars is an impressive, multifaceted study of one of the most ubiquitous and controversial commodities in history, the cigarette, in a society famous for heavy smoking. Drawing on medical tracts, Russian literature, economic records, advertising posters and a host of other sources, this richly illustrated volume has something for everyone and connects to a remarkable range of topics through one of the most disposable commodities imaginable. Starks does a fantastic job of balancing the culturally constructed meaning of her subject with its concrete physical realities. * Canadian-American Slavic Studies *Cigarettes and Soviets makes important contributions to recent work on the global history of tobacco use, along with adding to our understanding of socialist consumption and everyday life. Most delightfully, Starks's book demonstrates a keen understanding of Soviet visual culture in all its unex- pected and paradoxical dimensions, and her beautiful prose evokes the sights and smells of ordinary places in the USSR.,,Table of ContentsList of Tables and Maps Acknowledgments Introduction: Papirosy and Dependence 1. Cultivated: Exotic Blends and Imperial Designs 2. Produced: Tobacco Queens and Working Girls 3. Tasted: Distinctive Smoking and Social Inclusion 4. Condemned: Social Danger and Neurasthenic Decline 5. Contested: Medical Dispute and Public Disbelief Epilogue: Revolution and Cessation Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisBarbara Spackman here examines the ways in which decadent writers adopted the language of physiological illness and alteration as a figure for psychic otherness. By means of an ideological and rhetorical analysis of scientific as well as literary texts, she shows how the rhetoric of sickness provided the male decadent writer with an alibi for the occupation and appropriation of the female body.Trade ReviewDecadent Genealogies is an important book because it will promote further research into the intricate ties between D’Annunzio and the Futurists. -- Angela Dalle Vacche * SubStance *

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Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1943, Civilization and Disease was based on a series of lectures that the medical historian Henry E. Sigerist delivered at Cornell University in 1940. Now back in print, the book is a wide-ranging account of the importance of social factors on health and illness and the impact that disease has had on societies throughout human history. Despite considerable advances in both medicine and historiography, Civilization and Disease remains a landmark work in the history of medicine and a fascinating look at, first, civilization as a factor in the genesis and spread of disease, and second, the effects of disease on such aspects of civilization as economics, social life, law, philosophy, religion, science, and the arts. In a new foreword written for this edition, Elizabeth Fee outlines Sigerist's life, works, and legacy as a historian, a teacher, and an advocate for universal health care, hailing Civilization and Disease as an excellent introduction to Sigerist's worTrade ReviewA thoroughly readable book in one of the most fascinating fields in human history.... Sigerist treats his rich material with admirable organization and selection, and writes clearly, urbanely, and unpretentiously. * Chicago Sun *Sigerist makes clear, most interestingly and impressively, the great importance of social factors in health and in disease. The social activity which we call civilization is illuminatingly discussed through the adverse effects which its malfunctioning has upon the health of the individual. * New York Times *It is a far cry from the Black Death to women’s corsets, but Sigerist gets both into the compass of his book. It is a fascinating story, told with rare skill. * Montreal Daily Star *Sigerist examines with deep comprehension and admirable erudition which conditions have been and are favorable and which detrimental to the health of the individuals and the community. In each chapter, we find a fascinating survey of historical facts and a clear summary of the conclusion. * American Historical Review *Civilization and Disease compellingly relates developments in medicine to economics, social life, the law and religion, and also to philosophy, literature and even music. * Times Higher Education *

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Book SynopsisYou know just how serious a problem alcoholism has become for our country. Frankly speaking, it has taken on the proportions of a national disaster. So spoke Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2009 as the government launched its latest anti-alcohol campaign. Challenging the standard narrative of top-down implementation of policy, Anna Bailey's Politics under the Influence breaks new ground in the analysis of Russian alcoholism and the politics of the Putin regime.The state is supposed to make policy in the national interest, to preserve the nation's health against the ravages inflicted by widespread alcohol abuse. In fact, Bailey shows, the Russian state is deeply divided, and policy is commonly a result of the competitive interactions of stakeholders with vested interests. Politics under the Influence turns a spotlight on the powerful vodka industry whose ties to Putin's political elite have grown in influence since 2009. She details how that lobby has used tTrade ReviewThis is a well-constructed, detailed study of recent governmental action regarding alcohol in Russia with relevance for political scientists, public health researchers, historians, and policymakers. Bailey does an excellent job, using a vast array of sources woven together in convincing narratives, of bringing illumination to the "black box" of public policy construction under Putin. * The Russian Review *In this detailed analysis of the Russian state's ambivalent attitude toward vodka, Anna Bailey argues that excessive alcohol consumption has plagued Russian society for centuries. * Survival: Global Politics and Strategy *This is a well-researched, useful and practical analysis of a problem which has beset Russia for centuries: how to control the Russian love of alcohol—given its highly negative effect on public order and the country's demographic situation—without significantly endangering the income that it produces in the form of (paid) taxes that contribute to the country's economic and social development? * Europe-Asia Studies *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Contradictions of Alcohol Policy 1. Feeding the State: Vodka from Tsarism to Communism 2. Soviet Policy Doublethink 3. The Parasites Feed: State Capture under Yeltsin 4. Regaining State Control under Putin 5. The Judo Gang: Informal Networks and Perceptions of Power 6. An All-Powerful Regulator 7. Beer: The New Pretender on the Russian Alcohol Market 8. The Brewer's Nemesis in the Duma 9. "Vodka Is Our Enemy, but Who Said We're Afraid of Enemies?" 10. From Illegality to Demography: Alcohol Policy Paradigms 11. The New Antialcohol Network 12. Medveded and the Antialcohol Initiative 13. Alcohol Policy as Battleground: The 2011 Alcohol Law 14. The Campaign is Over, but the Battle Continues Conclusion: What Alcohol Tells Us about Russian Politics Appendix 1: Methodology and Research Methods Appendix 2: List of Respondents and Statements in the Public Domain Appendix 3: List of Interview Questions Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisU.S. military conflicts abroad have left nine million Americans dependent on the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) for medical care. Their wounds of war are treated by the largest hospital system in the countryone that has come under fire from critics in the White House, on Capitol Hill, and in the nation''s media.In Wounds of War, Suzanne Gordon draws on five years of observational research to describe how the VHA does a better job than private sector institutions offering primary and geriatric care, mental health and home care services, and support for patients nearing the end of life. In the unusual culture of solidarity between patients and providers that the VHA has fostered, Gordon finds a working model for higher-quality health care and a much-needed alternative to the practice of for-profit medicine.Trade ReviewImportant and timely. * BeyondChron *A terrific book, and I would recommend that every veteran depending upon the VA for his or her healthcare buy it. * The Veteran *Important and timely. * CounterPunch *This book offers a unique approach to an important topic and is an essential addition for institutions with programs in medicine and other health-affiliated fields (health administration, social work, etc.), public policy and administration, political science, or for any public library serving veteran and/or military populations. * Choice *For better or worse, the course of VA health care now depends on a citizenry and health policy community that possesses little firsthand experience with its services or achievements. Wounds of War is a tremendous starting point for those interested in understanding the importance of getting these decisions right. * Washington Monthly *A compelling account of the many strengths of the Veterans Healthcare System.... Gordon documents these strengths with informative statistics as well as compelling narratives of innovative programs, commendable teamwork and exemplary clinical providers.... A valued view of a system which, even with its flaws, still has remarkable strengths to offer soldiers when their service to our nation is completed. * The Pharos *Wounds of War is a valuable resource for veterans' rights advocates as well as everyone concerned with the struggle for Medicare for all. * Against the Current *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction: What Kind of Care for Veterans? 1. Promises Broken and Kept: A Short History of the VHA 2. Those Who Have Borne the Battle: The VHA's Patient Population Profile—What It Means to Be a VA Volunteer 3. Primary Care the Way It Should Be 4. Healing Minds and Bodies: Integrated Mental Health Care and Primary Care 5. Dealing with a World of Hurt: VHA Treatment of Chronic Pain 6. When Wounded Warriors Are Women: Caring for Female Veterans 7. Mental Health the Way It Should Be 8. Unpacking PTSD: From Diagnosis to Effective Treatment Profi le—Karen Parko: A Special Kind of Professional Development at the VA 9. Returning to Civilian Life: Veterans on Campus 10. Suicide Prevention: VHA Programs That Save Lives 11. Overcoming Disability: VA Rehabilitation Services Profile—Mark Smith: No Ordinary Bike Shop 12. Transcending Trauma: The Martinez Cognitive Rehabilitation Program 13. Off the Streets: Reducing Veteran Homelessness 14. Alternatives to Jail: Veterans' Justice Programs Profile—Cops and Vets: The Memphis Crisis Intervention Model 15. Specializing in Elder Care: The VA and Geriatrics 16. Knocking on Heaven's Door: The VA and End-of-Life Care 17. Better Care Where? The VHA Compared to the Private Sector Conclusion: A System Worth Saving—and Making Even Better Epilogue: Thank You for Your Service? Notes Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisAntivaxxers are crazy. That is the perception we all gain from the media, the internet, celebrities, and beyond, writes Bernice Hausman in Anti/Vax, but we need to open our eyes and ears so that we can all have a better conversation about vaccine skepticism and its implications.Hausman argues that the heated debate about vaccinations and whether to get them or not is most often fueled by accusations and vilifications rather than careful attention to the real concerns of many Americans. She wants to set the record straight about vaccine skepticism and show how the issues and ideas that motivate itlike suspicion of pharmaceutical companies or the belief that some illness is necessary to good healthare commonplace in our society.Through Anti/Vax, Hausman wants to engage public health officials, the media, and each of us in a public dialogue about the relation of individual bodily autonomy to the state''s responsibility to safeguard citizens'' health. We needTrade ReviewSolid scholarship, clear writing, and a deep bibliography help this book stand out from others on this subject. Hausman's work is spot on and deserves a wide readership. * Choice *Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Vaccination Stories and Why I Wrote This Book 1. So What Bothers You about Vaccines? 2. Immune to Reason 3. Whom Do You Trust? 4. Being a Responsible Parent 5. Is Vaccine Refusal a Form of Science Denial? 6. What Are Facts, and How Do We Trust Them? 7. Medicalization and Biomedicalization 8. Antimedicine in Theory and Practice 9. Viral Imaginations 10. Anti/Vax Conclusion: What Vaccination Controversy Can Teach Us about Medicine and Modernity Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAgainst the backdrop of a post-Soviet state set aflame by geopolitical conflict and violent revolution, Narkomania considers whether substance use disorders are everywhere the same and whether our responses to drug use presuppose what kind of people those who use drugs really are. Jennifer J. Carroll''s ethnography is a story about public health and international efforts to quell the spread of HIV. Carroll focuses on Ukraine where the prevalence of HIV among people who use drugs is higher than in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and unpacks the arguments and myths surrounding medication-assisted treatment (MAT) in Ukraine. What she presents in Narkomania forces us to question drug policy, its uses, and its effects on normal citizens.Carroll uses her findings to explore what people who use drugs can teach us about the contemporary societies emerging in post-Soviet space. With examples of how MAT has been politicized, how drug use has been tied to ideas of good citizenTrade ReviewViolence and war are inevitably entangled with public health crises. Jennifer Carroll's book vividly shows how those crises are made even worse when unfounded assumptions lead to the condemnation of certain groups * Current History *Carroll efficiently explores how the term addiction allows for all kinds of contradictory and composite meanings. * The Lancet *Jennifer Carroll has done a magistral job in helping the rest of us understand the global and local processes that have produced the current predicament of Ukrainian injecting drug users. The single most cautionary aspect of this book lies in its warning against the use of dismissive presence in society. * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *Narkomania is an important contribution to the field of medical anthropology, but the author's unique perspective and extensive fieldwork make it relevant across Ukrainian studies. Carroll creates a tapestry in which drug use and addiction are seamlessly interwoven with political changes that are resonant far beyond Ukraine's borders. * Harvard Ukrainian Studies *This book is a novel, poignant, and sincere contribution to anthropology and to Ukrainian studies. It will make a thought-provoking read for anyone researching or interested in contemporary Ukraine and its vulnerable population, including students, policymakers, and government employees. * Anthropologica *

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Book SynopsisAgainst the backdrop of a post-Soviet state set aflame by geopolitical conflict and violent revolution, Narkomania considers whether substance use disorders are everywhere the same and whether our responses to drug use presuppose what kind of people those who use drugs really are. Jennifer J. Carroll''s ethnography is a story about public health and international efforts to quell the spread of HIV. Carroll focuses on Ukraine where the prevalence of HIV among people who use drugs is higher than in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and unpacks the arguments and myths surrounding medication-assisted treatment (MAT) in Ukraine. What she presents in Narkomania forces us to question drug policy, its uses, and its effects on normal citizens.Carroll uses her findings to explore what people who use drugs can teach us about the contemporary societies emerging in post-Soviet space. With examples of how MAT has been politicized, how drug use has been tied to ideas of good citizenTrade ReviewViolence and war are inevitably entangled with public health crises. Jennifer Carroll's book vividly shows how those crises are made even worse when unfounded assumptions lead to the condemnation of certain groups * Current History *Carroll efficiently explores how the term addiction allows for all kinds of contradictory and composite meanings. * The Lancet *Jennifer Carroll has done a magistral job in helping the rest of us understand the global and local processes that have produced the current predicament of Ukrainian injecting drug users. The single most cautionary aspect of this book lies in its warning against the use of dismissive presence in society. * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *Narkomania is an important contribution to the field of medical anthropology, but the author's unique perspective and extensive fieldwork make it relevant across Ukrainian studies. Carroll creates a tapestry in which drug use and addiction are seamlessly interwoven with political changes that are resonant far beyond Ukraine's borders. * Harvard Ukrainian Studies *This book is a novel, poignant, and sincere contribution to anthropology and to Ukrainian studies. It will make a thought-provoking read for anyone researching or interested in contemporary Ukraine and its vulnerable population, including students, policymakers, and government employees. * Anthropologica *

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Book SynopsisCervical cancer is the third leading cause of death among women in Venezuela, with poor and working-class women bearing the brunt of it. Doctors and public health officials regard promiscuity and poor hygiene—coded indicators for low class, low culture, and bad morals—as risk factors for the disease. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork conducted in two oncology hospitals in Caracas, Marked Women is an ethnography of women's experiences with cervical cancer, the doctors and nurses who treat them, and the public health officials and administrators who set up intervention programs to combat the disease. Rebecca G. Martínez contextualizes patient-doctor interactions within a historical arc of Venezuelan nationalism, modernity, neoliberalism, and Chavismo to understand the scientific, social, and political discourses surrounding the disease. The women, marked as deviant for their sexual transgressions, are not only characterized as engaging in unhygienic, uncultured, and promiscuous behaviors, but also become embodiments of these very behaviors. Ultimately, Marked Women explores how epidemiological risk is a socially, culturally, and historically embedded process—and how this enables cervical cancer to stigmatize women as socially marginal, burdens on society, and threats to the "health" of the modern nation.Trade Review"Marked Women provides insights that only an extended ethnographic engagement can offer. Rebecca Martínez captures the consistent and yet changing political landscape of poverty, class, and race that frames Venezuelan women's lives and health. A must read for anyone interested in Latin America, medical anthropology, neoliberalism, and the social determinants of health."—Leo R. Chavez, author of The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation"Marked Women is richly detailed and lucidly written. Rebecca Martínez masterfully develops her arguments with honesty and great compassion, situating her analyses at the intersections of disease, sexuality, morality, and citizenship. Her insights into the disparate power dynamics responsible for the persistent stigmatizing of cervical cancer in Venezuela provide new, much-needed perspectives on this tragic global health phenomenon."—Carole H. Browner, University of California, Los Angeles"Rebecca Martínez's remarkable ethnographic eye and ear discern how pathologies of public health infrastructures and professional socialization inscribe gender and class stereotypes not only on bodies but on popular perceptions of poor women and the cervical cancers that too often kill them."—Clara Mantini-Briggs, co-author of Stories in the Time of Cholera: Racial Profiling during a Medical Nightmare"In this excellent work of feminist medical anthropology, Martínez (women's and gender studies, Univ. of Missouri) focuses on the ways neoliberalism has affected health care in Venezuela....The transcriptions of the patients' responses are informative, disturbing, and often upsetting, but their articulation of their feelings draws readers into their narratives. They are not just ethnographic material but real women with real lives. The book is appropriate for upper-division undergraduate and graduate courses in gender studies, anthropology, and Latin American studies."—H. Aquino, CHOICE"Martínez presents an ethnography of cervical cancer that powerfully analyses biomedical and public health practice first in the neoliberal context of the 1990s and then in the socialism of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro...This reader very much hopes that Martínez continues her work, particularly at this historical moment of intense political and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela."––Tita Chico, The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural TheoryTable of ContentsIntroduction: Caracas, Venezuela: On Arrival 1. Hospitals, Patients, and Doctors 2. The Ambiguities of Risk: Morality, Hygiene, and the "Other" 3. Targeting Women: Bodies out of "Control," Public Health, and the Body Politic 4. The Hospital Encounter: Bodies Marked, Mended, and Manipulated 5. Women's Agency and Resilience: "They Way I Want to Be Treated" Epilogue: From Neoliberalism to Chávez

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Book SynopsisCervical cancer is the third leading cause of death among women in Venezuela, with poor and working-class women bearing the brunt of it. Doctors and public health officials regard promiscuity and poor hygiene—coded indicators for low class, low culture, and bad morals—as risk factors for the disease. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork conducted in two oncology hospitals in Caracas, Marked Women is an ethnography of women's experiences with cervical cancer, the doctors and nurses who treat them, and the public health officials and administrators who set up intervention programs to combat the disease. Rebecca G. Martínez contextualizes patient-doctor interactions within a historical arc of Venezuelan nationalism, modernity, neoliberalism, and Chavismo to understand the scientific, social, and political discourses surrounding the disease. The women, marked as deviant for their sexual transgressions, are not only characterized as engaging in unhygienic, uncultured, and promiscuous behaviors, but also become embodiments of these very behaviors. Ultimately, Marked Women explores how epidemiological risk is a socially, culturally, and historically embedded process—and how this enables cervical cancer to stigmatize women as socially marginal, burdens on society, and threats to the "health" of the modern nation.Trade Review"Marked Women provides insights that only an extended ethnographic engagement can offer. Rebecca Martínez captures the consistent and yet changing political landscape of poverty, class, and race that frames Venezuelan women's lives and health. A must read for anyone interested in Latin America, medical anthropology, neoliberalism, and the social determinants of health."—Leo R. Chavez, author of The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation"Marked Women is richly detailed and lucidly written. Rebecca Martínez masterfully develops her arguments with honesty and great compassion, situating her analyses at the intersections of disease, sexuality, morality, and citizenship. Her insights into the disparate power dynamics responsible for the persistent stigmatizing of cervical cancer in Venezuela provide new, much-needed perspectives on this tragic global health phenomenon."—Carole H. Browner, University of California, Los Angeles"Rebecca Martínez's remarkable ethnographic eye and ear discern how pathologies of public health infrastructures and professional socialization inscribe gender and class stereotypes not only on bodies but on popular perceptions of poor women and the cervical cancers that too often kill them."—Clara Mantini-Briggs, co-author of Stories in the Time of Cholera: Racial Profiling during a Medical Nightmare"In this excellent work of feminist medical anthropology, Martínez (women's and gender studies, Univ. of Missouri) focuses on the ways neoliberalism has affected health care in Venezuela....The transcriptions of the patients' responses are informative, disturbing, and often upsetting, but their articulation of their feelings draws readers into their narratives. They are not just ethnographic material but real women with real lives. The book is appropriate for upper-division undergraduate and graduate courses in gender studies, anthropology, and Latin American studies."—H. Aquino, CHOICE"Martínez presents an ethnography of cervical cancer that powerfully analyses biomedical and public health practice first in the neoliberal context of the 1990s and then in the socialism of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro...This reader very much hopes that Martínez continues her work, particularly at this historical moment of intense political and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela."––Tita Chico, The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural TheoryTable of ContentsIntroduction: Caracas, Venezuela: On Arrival 1. Hospitals, Patients, and Doctors 2. The Ambiguities of Risk: Morality, Hygiene, and the "Other" 3. Targeting Women: Bodies out of "Control," Public Health, and the Body Politic 4. The Hospital Encounter: Bodies Marked, Mended, and Manipulated 5. Women's Agency and Resilience: "They Way I Want to Be Treated" Epilogue: From Neoliberalism to Chávez

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Book SynopsisAn eye-opening and compelling ethnography about how doctors make decisions The oath that doctors take to "do no harm" suggests that patient welfare is at the center of what it means to be a successful medical professional. It is also understood, however, that hospitals are not only vessels for medical care—they are businesses, educational institutions, and complex bureaucracies with intricate codes of etiquette that dictate how each staff member should approach situations with patients. In Conflicted Care, Hyeyoung Oh Nelson provides an in-depth look at the decision-making processes of physicians at a large, prestigious academic medical center—that she calls Pacific Medical Center—and finds that more often than not patient wellbeing is only one of several factors governing day-to-day decisions. The steps physicians take reveal a kind of hidden curriculum of the medical world, one that is guided by status and hierarchy, bureaucracy, norms for consulting with third-parties, regulations for interactions with patients, and medical uncertainty. While at an institutional and individual level patient care continues to be integral to everything the physicians do, they are forced to reconcile that vow with these other, often-conflicting internal logics. Harm, Nelson argues, is thus built into the practice of medicine in the United States. This harm can take the form of unnecessary treatments and consultations or inadequate treatment for pain to motivate specialist intervention that would otherwise be resisted. These and other practices have the overall consequence of significantly driving up inpatient care costs, which then results in patients forgoing needed, ongoing treatment once they receive their medical bills. Drawing on a deep ethnography of physicians in the Internal Medicine Service unit, Nelson offers a sharp assessment of current policies aimed at alleviating medical costs and explains why they are ineffective. She concludes by offering novel policy and practice recommendations for health care practitioners, policy makers, and healthcare institutions. Trade Review"This impressive book makes important contributions to our understanding of the different types of pressures that add to the complexity of medical care in the United States today. The close, on-the-ground description of these concerns is a valuable addition to the sociology of medicine and health."—Michael Sauder, author of Engines of Anxiety"[Conflicted Care] presents a valuable framework for a careful evaluation of factors influencing medical decision-making that can be replicated in various settings and time periods. Recommended."—R. A. Brugna, CHOICETable of Contents1. Doctors' Dilemmas 2. Conflicting Logics 3. Notation 4. Consultations 5. Discharge 6. Costs

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Book SynopsisThe All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) is iconic in the landscape of Indian healthcare. Established in the early years of independence, this enormous public teaching hospital rapidly gained fame for the high-quality treatment it offered at a nominal cost; at present, an average of ten thousand patients pass through the outpatient department each day. With its notorious medical program acceptance rate of less than 0.01%, AIIMS also sits at the apex of Indian medical education. To be trained as a doctor here is to be considered the best. In what way does this enduring reputation of excellence shape the institution's ethos? How does elite medical education sustain India's social hierarchies and the health inequalities entrenched within? In the first-ever ethnography of AIIMS, Anna Ruddock considers prestige as a byproduct of norms attached to ambition, aspiration, caste, and class in modern India, and illustrates how the institution's reputation affects its students' present experiences and future career choices. Ruddock untangles the threads of intellectual exceptionalism, social and power stratification, and health inequality that are woven into the health care taught and provided at AIIMS, asking what is lost when medicine is used not as a social equalizer but as a means to cultivate and maintain prestige.Trade Review"Who is medical education really for? What do medical schools actually teach? This quietly devastating study of India's 'best' medical school, and the 'best' students who attend it, reveals how good intentions and entrenched ideas about value and merit combine to produce fragmented, expensive, ill-distributed and disrespectfully delivered medical care. Special Treatment illuminates troubling patterns that extend well beyond contemporary India." -- Claire Wendland * University of Wisconsin-Madison *"Special Treatment is a valuable, much-needed addition to the sparse body of ethnographic work on elite institutions of professional education. Anna Ruddock has crafted a sensitive and sympathetic—yet nuanced and critical—account of how the best-regarded doctors in the country are trained at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. This book overcomes the daunting difficulties of studying a powerful 'institution of excellence' and illuminates its functioning without descending into hagiography." -- Satish Deshpande * Delhi University *"Ruddock's description of the overcrowded out-patient departments at AIIMS; and the common (though not exclusive) attitude of the faculty and students that patients are 'interesting cases', with little understanding of the social context of disease and healing, will be familiar to medical students from any government college in the country... A single institution cannot be expected to change the medical culture in the entire country, as Ruddock says, yet it is sad that AIIMS has not used its privileged position to show the way." -- George Thomas * The India Forum *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1AIIMS is AIIMS chapter abstractIn this introductory chapter I give an overview of the place of AIIMS in the landscape of Indian healthcare and its status as the country's most prestigious medical college. I outline my argument that by virtue of its elite status and narrow definition of excellence in medicine, undergraduate education at AIIMS works to reproduce rather than interrogate social inequalities, forgoing opportunities to acquaint students with the potential of medicine to be a transformative social endeavor. 2The Beginning: Establishing AIIMS chapter abstractI tell the story of the creation of AIIMS, drawing on historical sources and interviews with some of the institute's first students and faculty. I show how the institute was a product of and a response to the politics of medical education in colonial India and I discuss the tensions inherent in its mandate to embody global standards of biomedical prowess while also addressing the needs of the predominantly poor and rural population of a newly independent nation. 3Getting In: Being the Best chapter abstractI introduce the students who appear throughout the book and trace how they went from being schoolchildren considering a medical career to trainee doctors profiled in the media for winning a seat at India's most coveted medical college. In doing so, I pay particular attention to the social phenomenon that is the AIIMS MBBS entrance exam and the way that it illuminates and entrenches inequalities while also working to fuel narratives that firmly associate concepts of achievement and merit with upper casteness via the general category. Looking particularly at the function of exam ranking, I present the concept of'biographical numbers as a means of exploring the subjective impact of rank on students' sense of self and their potential futures. 4Being In: "Freedom" chapter abstractChapter 4 takes us through the gates of AIIMS and into the lives of its students. Reflecting on the discourse of freedom that I often heard from students, I interpret the MBBS as a liminal period in the lives of students, which offers transformative possibilities that nevertheless contain their own limits. This thread becomes a discussion of affirmative action at AIIMS, and the ways in which a discourse of caste and meritorious achievement influences how students think about themselves and each other as citizens and future doctors. The politics of affirmative action counter any idealized vision of AIIMS as an institution transcending oppressive social structures in the pursuit of a universal humanist medical science. The institute, and medicine itself, is not set-apart from but is emblematic of the social unease characteristic of modern India. 5Ways and Means of Learning: Impressions from the Clinic chapter abstractI discuss patient labor, a phenomenon whereby students appreciate the number and diversity of AIIMS patients as an educational asset, at an institution that conditions those students to become (super)specialized clinicians unlikely to provide the frontline care that many patients come to the hospital for lack of. I also draw on ethnographic material from wards and outpatient clinics to show how a hidden curriculum naturalizes structural inequalities that play out in the clinical encounter, imparting impressions to students of what it means to be a good doctor and a responsible patient. Integrating other ways of learning about medicine, such as through the humanities, would, I argue, create space for reflection on the social role of the doctor and open up possibilities for addressing rather than reproducing inequalities. 6Graduation: The Consequences of Excellence chapter abstractThis final chapter is concerned with AIIMS students' perceptions of possible futures, which are shot through with discursive threads about achievement and reputation, family, the state, money, and technology. These threads combine to produce a hierarchy of biomedical practice. Not all medical students go on to pursue medical professions. However, whether a student aspires to a career as a super specialist, a public health practitioner, a civil servant, or an entrepreneur, I argue that the choice is inextricable from the status bestowed upon AIIMS students at the moment of admission. The social life of this achievement, combined with the influence of norms around class, caste, gender and kinship produces expectations of the future and an individual's place within it, offering different but related impressions of what it means to be a graduate of India's most prestigious medical college. 7Appendix: On Methodology chapter abstractThis appendix explains how I was given research access to AIIMS and the methodology of the study. I discuss the ableist narratives that are traditionally attached to anthropological fieldwork and encourage more attention to the experiences of disabled anthropologists in order to make it a more inclusive social science.

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Book SynopsisIn the mid-1990s, experts predicted that India would face the world's biggest AIDS epidemic by 2000. Though a crisis at this scale never fully materialized, global public health institutions, donors, and the Indian state initiated a massive effort to prevent it. HIV prevention programs channeled billions of dollars toward those groups designated as at-risk—sex workers and men who have sex with men. At Risk captures this unique moment in which these criminalized and marginalized groups reinvented their "at-risk" categorization and became central players in the crisis response. The AIDS crisis created a contradictory, conditional, and temporary opening for sex-worker and LGBTIQ activists to renegotiate citizenship and to make demands on the state. Working across India and Kenya, Gowri Vijayakumar provides a fine-grained account of the political struggles at the heart of the Indian AIDS response. These range from everyday articulations of sexual identity in activist organizations in Bangalore to new approaches to HIV prevention in Nairobi, where prevention strategies first introduced in India are adapted and circulate, as in the global AIDS field more broadly. Vijayakumar illuminates how the politics of gender, sexuality, and nationalism shape global crisis response. In so doing, she considers the precarious potential for social change in and after a crisis.Trade Review"At Risk is feminist transnational sociology at its best! Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this book tells a richly textured, and often surprising, story about how Indian sex workers and LGBTQ people impacted the terrains of sexual politics amidst the AIDS crisis. Vijayakumar deftly illuminates what the global South has to teach us about sexual epidemics, activism, and the transformation of sexual cultures."—Jyoti Puri, Simmons University"At Risk offers the near-historical, ethnographic critique of sexuality politics and the HIV/AIDS crisis in India that we need. Vijayakumar shows in rich detail how 'ideas of sexuality are the "fulcrum" for constructing difference around race, caste, gender, and class,' in part by seriously examining the transnational linkages between Indian and African sex workers' rights movements during the 1990s and 2000s. This book is a critique of a moment that is critical for understanding a uniquely global health crisis, and what it revealed about the idea of 'India' in a uniquely changing world."—Svati P. Shah, University of Massachusetts, Amherst"[At Risk] provides an excellent overview of not only the AIDS epidemic in India but also its intersections with sexual politics at home as well as its linkages to the global AIDS field. The work will prove to be useful for anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and any scholar interested in the sexual politics of AIDS in India."—Arnav Bhattacharya, H-Sci-Med-Tech"Reading [At Risk] at a time when global discourses of COVID-19 continue to dominate public health and media narratives has provided an important frame for critically thinking about global inequalities and their long- and short-term impacts on the lives of people. The book will make for interesting reading for gender and sexuality scholars and scholars interested in critically understanding the everyday state as well as contemporary India and its global dynamics."—Shannon Philip, Contributions to Indian Sociology"At Risk expands the possibilities of decolonizing American sociological scholarship... to build theory from global sites that have implications beyond their immediate coordinates. Particularly now, as we emerge from the reluctant aftermath of another global pandemic, and—perhaps unrelated—deal with new sexual crises produced by the state that implicate gendered bodies, these findings feel atemporal, omnipresent, and urgent."—Swethaa Ballakrishnen, American Journal of Sociology"In At Risk,Vijayakumar offers an insightful, ethnographically rich account of how AIDS funding changed the landscape of sex worker activism and related state bureaucracy in India."—Tara Gonsalves, British Journal of SociologyTable of Contents1. Introduction 2. India and the Specter of African AIDS 3. From Containment to Incorporation 4. At-Risk Citizens 5. Risky Selves 6. Making It Count 7. India in Africa 8. After AIDS

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Book SynopsisIn the mid-1990s, experts predicted that India would face the world's biggest AIDS epidemic by 2000. Though a crisis at this scale never fully materialized, global public health institutions, donors, and the Indian state initiated a massive effort to prevent it. HIV prevention programs channeled billions of dollars toward those groups designated as at-risk—sex workers and men who have sex with men. At Risk captures this unique moment in which these criminalized and marginalized groups reinvented their "at-risk" categorization and became central players in the crisis response. The AIDS crisis created a contradictory, conditional, and temporary opening for sex-worker and LGBTIQ activists to renegotiate citizenship and to make demands on the state. Working across India and Kenya, Gowri Vijayakumar provides a fine-grained account of the political struggles at the heart of the Indian AIDS response. These range from everyday articulations of sexual identity in activist organizations in Bangalore to new approaches to HIV prevention in Nairobi, where prevention strategies first introduced in India are adapted and circulate, as in the global AIDS field more broadly. Vijayakumar illuminates how the politics of gender, sexuality, and nationalism shape global crisis response. In so doing, she considers the precarious potential for social change in and after a crisis.Trade Review"At Risk is feminist transnational sociology at its best! Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this book tells a richly textured, and often surprising, story about how Indian sex workers and LGBTQ people impacted the terrains of sexual politics amidst the AIDS crisis. Vijayakumar deftly illuminates what the global South has to teach us about sexual epidemics, activism, and the transformation of sexual cultures."—Jyoti Puri, Simmons University"At Risk offers the near-historical, ethnographic critique of sexuality politics and the HIV/AIDS crisis in India that we need. Vijayakumar shows in rich detail how 'ideas of sexuality are the "fulcrum" for constructing difference around race, caste, gender, and class,' in part by seriously examining the transnational linkages between Indian and African sex workers' rights movements during the 1990s and 2000s. This book is a critique of a moment that is critical for understanding a uniquely global health crisis, and what it revealed about the idea of 'India' in a uniquely changing world."—Svati P. Shah, University of Massachusetts, Amherst"[At Risk] provides an excellent overview of not only the AIDS epidemic in India but also its intersections with sexual politics at home as well as its linkages to the global AIDS field. The work will prove to be useful for anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and any scholar interested in the sexual politics of AIDS in India."—Arnav Bhattacharya, H-Sci-Med-Tech"Reading [At Risk] at a time when global discourses of COVID-19 continue to dominate public health and media narratives has provided an important frame for critically thinking about global inequalities and their long- and short-term impacts on the lives of people. The book will make for interesting reading for gender and sexuality scholars and scholars interested in critically understanding the everyday state as well as contemporary India and its global dynamics."—Shannon Philip, Contributions to Indian Sociology"At Risk expands the possibilities of decolonizing American sociological scholarship... to build theory from global sites that have implications beyond their immediate coordinates. Particularly now, as we emerge from the reluctant aftermath of another global pandemic, and—perhaps unrelated—deal with new sexual crises produced by the state that implicate gendered bodies, these findings feel atemporal, omnipresent, and urgent."—Swethaa Ballakrishnen, American Journal of Sociology"In At Risk,Vijayakumar offers an insightful, ethnographically rich account of how AIDS funding changed the landscape of sex worker activism and related state bureaucracy in India."—Tara Gonsalves, British Journal of SociologyTable of Contents1. Introduction 2. India and the Specter of African AIDS 3. From Containment to Incorporation 4. At-Risk Citizens 5. Risky Selves 6. Making It Count 7. India in Africa 8. After AIDS

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Book SynopsisThe All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) is iconic in the landscape of Indian healthcare. Established in the early years of independence, this enormous public teaching hospital rapidly gained fame for the high-quality treatment it offered at a nominal cost; at present, an average of ten thousand patients pass through the outpatient department each day. With its notorious medical program acceptance rate of less than 0.01%, AIIMS also sits at the apex of Indian medical education. To be trained as a doctor here is to be considered the best. In what way does this enduring reputation of excellence shape the institution's ethos? How does elite medical education sustain India's social hierarchies and the health inequalities entrenched within? In the first-ever ethnography of AIIMS, Anna Ruddock considers prestige as a byproduct of norms attached to ambition, aspiration, caste, and class in modern India, and illustrates how the institution's reputation affects its students' present experiences and future career choices. Ruddock untangles the threads of intellectual exceptionalism, social and power stratification, and health inequality that are woven into the health care taught and provided at AIIMS, asking what is lost when medicine is used not as a social equalizer but as a means to cultivate and maintain prestige.Trade Review"Who is medical education really for? What do medical schools actually teach? This quietly devastating study of India's 'best' medical school, and the 'best' students who attend it, reveals how good intentions and entrenched ideas about value and merit combine to produce fragmented, expensive, ill-distributed and disrespectfully delivered medical care. Special Treatment illuminates troubling patterns that extend well beyond contemporary India." -- Claire Wendland * University of Wisconsin-Madison *"Special Treatment is a valuable, much-needed addition to the sparse body of ethnographic work on elite institutions of professional education. Anna Ruddock has crafted a sensitive and sympathetic—yet nuanced and critical—account of how the best-regarded doctors in the country are trained at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. This book overcomes the daunting difficulties of studying a powerful 'institution of excellence' and illuminates its functioning without descending into hagiography." -- Satish Deshpande * Delhi University *"Ruddock's description of the overcrowded out-patient departments at AIIMS; and the common (though not exclusive) attitude of the faculty and students that patients are 'interesting cases', with little understanding of the social context of disease and healing, will be familiar to medical students from any government college in the country... A single institution cannot be expected to change the medical culture in the entire country, as Ruddock says, yet it is sad that AIIMS has not used its privileged position to show the way." -- George Thomas * The India Forum *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1AIIMS is AIIMS chapter abstractIn this introductory chapter I give an overview of the place of AIIMS in the landscape of Indian healthcare and its status as the country's most prestigious medical college. I outline my argument that by virtue of its elite status and narrow definition of excellence in medicine, undergraduate education at AIIMS works to reproduce rather than interrogate social inequalities, forgoing opportunities to acquaint students with the potential of medicine to be a transformative social endeavor. 2The Beginning: Establishing AIIMS chapter abstractI tell the story of the creation of AIIMS, drawing on historical sources and interviews with some of the institute's first students and faculty. I show how the institute was a product of and a response to the politics of medical education in colonial India and I discuss the tensions inherent in its mandate to embody global standards of biomedical prowess while also addressing the needs of the predominantly poor and rural population of a newly independent nation. 3Getting In: Being the Best chapter abstractI introduce the students who appear throughout the book and trace how they went from being schoolchildren considering a medical career to trainee doctors profiled in the media for winning a seat at India's most coveted medical college. In doing so, I pay particular attention to the social phenomenon that is the AIIMS MBBS entrance exam and the way that it illuminates and entrenches inequalities while also working to fuel narratives that firmly associate concepts of achievement and merit with upper casteness via the general category. Looking particularly at the function of exam ranking, I present the concept of'biographical numbers as a means of exploring the subjective impact of rank on students' sense of self and their potential futures. 4Being In: "Freedom" chapter abstractChapter 4 takes us through the gates of AIIMS and into the lives of its students. Reflecting on the discourse of freedom that I often heard from students, I interpret the MBBS as a liminal period in the lives of students, which offers transformative possibilities that nevertheless contain their own limits. This thread becomes a discussion of affirmative action at AIIMS, and the ways in which a discourse of caste and meritorious achievement influences how students think about themselves and each other as citizens and future doctors. The politics of affirmative action counter any idealized vision of AIIMS as an institution transcending oppressive social structures in the pursuit of a universal humanist medical science. The institute, and medicine itself, is not set-apart from but is emblematic of the social unease characteristic of modern India. 5Ways and Means of Learning: Impressions from the Clinic chapter abstractI discuss patient labor, a phenomenon whereby students appreciate the number and diversity of AIIMS patients as an educational asset, at an institution that conditions those students to become (super)specialized clinicians unlikely to provide the frontline care that many patients come to the hospital for lack of. I also draw on ethnographic material from wards and outpatient clinics to show how a hidden curriculum naturalizes structural inequalities that play out in the clinical encounter, imparting impressions to students of what it means to be a good doctor and a responsible patient. Integrating other ways of learning about medicine, such as through the humanities, would, I argue, create space for reflection on the social role of the doctor and open up possibilities for addressing rather than reproducing inequalities. 6Graduation: The Consequences of Excellence chapter abstractThis final chapter is concerned with AIIMS students' perceptions of possible futures, which are shot through with discursive threads about achievement and reputation, family, the state, money, and technology. These threads combine to produce a hierarchy of biomedical practice. Not all medical students go on to pursue medical professions. However, whether a student aspires to a career as a super specialist, a public health practitioner, a civil servant, or an entrepreneur, I argue that the choice is inextricable from the status bestowed upon AIIMS students at the moment of admission. The social life of this achievement, combined with the influence of norms around class, caste, gender and kinship produces expectations of the future and an individual's place within it, offering different but related impressions of what it means to be a graduate of India's most prestigious medical college. 7Appendix: On Methodology chapter abstractThis appendix explains how I was given research access to AIIMS and the methodology of the study. I discuss the ableist narratives that are traditionally attached to anthropological fieldwork and encourage more attention to the experiences of disabled anthropologists in order to make it a more inclusive social science.

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Book SynopsisEach year, billions of dollars are spent on global humanitarian health initiatives. These efforts are intended to care for suffering bodies, especially those of distressed children living in poverty. But as global medical aid can often overlook the local economic and political systems that cause bodily suffering, it can also unintentionally prolong the very conditions that hurt children and undermine local aid givers. Investigating medical humanitarian encounters in Egypt, Paradoxes of Care illustrates how child aid recipients and local aid experts grapple with global aid's shortcomings and its paradoxical outcomes. Rania Kassab Sweis examines how some of the world's largest aid organizations care for vulnerable children in Egypt, focusing on medical efforts with street children and out-of-school village girls. Her in-depth ethnographic study reveals how global medical aid fails to "save" these children according to its stated aims, and often maintains—or produces new—social disparities in children's lives. Foregrounding vulnerable children's responses to medical aid, Sweis moves past the unquestioned benevolence of global health to demonstrate how children must manage their own bodies and lives in the absence of adult care. With this book, she challenges readers to engage with the question of what medical caregivers and donors alike gain from such global humanitarian transactions.Trade Review"Medical humanitarianism has become the most prominent form of global health intervention. Based on the ethnographic study of several projects conducted with vulnerable children in Egypt, Paradoxes of Care uncovers, with tact and discernment, the complex and ambiguous effects of these benevolent actions as experienced by local aid workers as well as young recipients."—Didier Fassin, Institute for Advanced Study and Collège de France"This lucidly written book brings the robust anthropological critiques of global medical humanitarianism to bear on international organizations' attempts to help children in Egypt. Rania Kassab Sweis' clear analysis demonstrates the inherent paradoxes of seeking to save the 'vulnerable,' while leaving unchanged the structural conditions that produce those very vulnerabilities."—Sherine Hamdy, University of California, Irvine"This vivid and groundbreaking ethnography elevates the voices of Egypt's at-risk children, while deftly portraying the struggles of humanitarian actors to deliver aid amidst precarity. Paradoxes of Care is a must-read for those interested in medical humanitarianism, gender activism, and childhood studies in the Middle East and beyond."—Marcia C. Inhorn, Yale University"In [Paradoxes of Care]'s detaied ethnography of three nongovernmental organizations dedicated to providing medical care and health services to Egyptian children... Sweis illuminates both the global humanitarian industry and the lives of children in Egypt."—Lisa Anderson, Foreign Affairs"[Paradoxes of Care] is a valuable contribution to the field of charity and medical aid and to the cross-cultural study of children. Recommended."—M. L. Russell, CHOICE

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Book SynopsisWe are all citizens of the Biomedical Empire, though few of us know it, and even fewer understand the extent of its power. In this book, Barbara Katz Rothman clarifies that critiques of biopower and the "medical industrial complex" have not gone far enough, and asserts that the medical industry is nothing short of an imperial power. Factors as fundamental as one's citizenship and sex identity—drivers of our access to basic goods and services—rely on approval and legitimation by biomedicine. Moreover, a vast and powerful global market has risen up around the empire, making it one of the largest economic forces in the world. Katz Rothman shows that biomedicine has the key elements of an imperial power: economic leverage, the faith of its citizens, and governmental rule. She investigates the Western colonial underpinnings of the empire and its rapid intrusion into everyday life, focusing on the realms of birth and death. This provides her with a powerful vantage point from which to critically examine the current moment, when the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the power structures of the empire in unprecedented ways while sparking the most visible resistance it has ever seen.Trade Review"Women have always been healers, the wise women. Barbara Katz Rothman shows how medicine has taken over the gates of life, the care of our bodies, and what has cost communities and cultures around the world."—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Natural Causes"After the post-colonial critique of empire and the Foucauldian critique of biopower, Katz Rothman exposes the insidious reach of the biomedical empire, a global industry that has appropriated our capacity to care, commodified our sense of well-being, and seized full control over the beginning and end of life. Essential sociological reading for anyone interested in rescuing critical medical sociology from the clutches of right-wing populism."—Finn Bowring, Cardiff University"This book identifies the Biomedical Empire as the global leviathan monopolizing control of medicalized/industrialized healthcare, a truly imperial system defined by the bottom-line logic of 21st-century corporate- and finance-dominated global capitalism. This short, provocative account wonderfully illustrates how all this top-down-controlled machinery impacts intimate human events like birth, death, and the lonely terror of COVID-19 pandemic victims."—David Smith, University of California, Irvine"This work is a crisp critique of biomedicine which shows hope for a way out of the Biomedical Empire wherein the public, health and care may be infused back into public health."—Meghna Roy, Sociology of Health and Illness"While the book primarily draws on examples from the United States and the author's own lived experience, Rothman makes the case that the biomedical empire is transnational and transcends the nation-state. Unfolding over ten chapters, the book contributes to existing work in the sociology of medicine and scholarship on empire in contemporary contexts."—Durgesh Solanki, Journal of World-Systems Research"This book provides a compelling argument that only by naming the Biomedical Empire and recognizing biomedical citizenship can we begin to transform societies to act on the fundamental determinants of health."—Crystal Adams, Contemporary Sociology"Taken together... this book is a powerful damnation of contemporary health care systems, particularly in the United States where every service is itemized and billed."—Jill Thistlethwaite, Fulbright Chronicles"In a nutshell, [Katz Rothman's] book is a must-have not just for scholars and researchers interested in medical sociology but also for anybody seeking to familiarize themselves with the biomedical empire. Anyone who has visited a hospital or used biomedical services will be able to connect to the book. As a result, practically everyone should read the book."—Pankaj Singh, H-Death"[The Biomedical Empire is] an invitation to us all to rethink how we theorize the local and the global, class and power, and our subjection to persistent, escalating inequality worldwide."—Lenore Manderson, American Journal of SociologyTable of ContentsContents and Abstracts1A Moment of Crisis chapter abstractThe covid pandemic has laid bare many of the structural problems and inequalities of biomedicine as a global industry. Inequalities across nation-states as well as within them have been made apparent, as have some of the dehumanizing and isolating practices of medical treatment. We must both acknowledge the good that medicine does and recognize its failures. 2A Sociologist Walks into a Pandemic chapter abstractThis chapter lays out the basic elements of sociological thinking, the understanding of structural and cultural factors. It explains the concept of 'social construction' and shows how that is applied to medicine. 3Bringing Medical Sociology into the 21st Century chapter abstractSociology must go beyond thinking of individual 'societies' and understand the globalization of power. This applies to biopower, the ways that the imperial power of Biomedicine has expanded its reach. Biomedicine functions globally in much the way we think of other imperial powers, from the Roman Empire to the British and onward, colonizing arenas of knowledge and practice, and turning them into sources of income for the colonizer. 4The Three Elements of an Empire chapter abstractTo understand Biomedicine as an Imperial power means seeing it as not only one of the largest industries on earth, but also as a governmental force and as a religious force. This chapter details the wide economic reach of biomedicine as one of the largest industries on earth, which also has a rule of law, bestowing citizenship, legitimating individuals as having the right to have rights; certifying both birth and death certificates; and legitimating mental states of being. Biomedicine also functions as a religion, a source of belief and comfort. 5What Have We Lost? Where Did the Care Go? chapter abstractWe must distinguish 'health care' from 'medical services.' Public health is increasingly presented as access to medical services, the 'ask your doctor' approach. Public health in its origins was about creating a health-enabling environment, providing clean air, water, safe housing and this chapter argues we must return to that. Within biomedical control, individuals are best understood as 'patients,' consumers of medical services. The language of 'patient' is itself explored. 6The Land of the Sick chapter abstractThis chapter builds on Sontag's words, identifying illness as 'land of the sick.' Diagnosis serves the administrative purpose of admitting, or denying admission, to that land, via the 'sick role,' the position of patient. Where in traditional societies religion stood at the gates of life, welcoming and legitimating newly created people and ushering out the dying, in the contemporary world Biomedicine has taken over that function. This is apparent in the world of procreation, in which biomedicine controls the definition of embryonic and fetal personhood, and in death in which a medical declaration and certificate is required. Birth and death have become procedural moments under biomedical control. 7Death and Dying: Seen Through the Lens of Covid-19 chapter abstractThis chapter discusses sudden death and the history of attempts at resuscitation; slow death, the increasing movement of death into hospital-management; and the slowest death, the growth of nursing homes and long-term-care facilities. The role of nursing home in covid deaths has been dramatic, and the inherent risks of these facilities laid clear. 8The Other Gate: Birth in the Time of Covid chapter abstractBirth was one of the early examples of colonization in medicine, as doctors pushed midwives out of practice and turned birth into a medical procedure, with (contrary to popular belief) increased risks and loss of life. As the pandemic made the dangers of hospitalization more clear, the contemporary movement for out-of-hospital birth received more attention. The risks of hospitalization are not randomly distributed, social class and –in the United States in particular – race are risk factors for medical mistreatment. 9The Empire Strikes Back chapter abstractAmong the more dramatic images to come out of the covid epidemic have been the isolation of the sick, elderly and the dying. The absence of caring attention has become apparent as people are blocked from bedside presence. Some attempts were made to move outside of the 'hot bed' of infection that hospitals are, the place where the infectious and sick are congregated. And attempts were made to control the spread of the disease using variations on 'lockdowns,' closing borders and limiting interpersonal connection in what was called 'social distancing,' all with limited success. 10Lessons Learned chapter abstractPoints of resistance to the control of biomedicine as an imperial power can be seen in different communities around the globe and can give indications of how such resistance might be furthered. In this as in the rest of the book, the good that medicine can do is recognized. The development of a vaccine is a powerful force for good, but resistance or fear can be best understood in the context of the larger imperial power. We must put a focus on health, and a valuing of care, into what is called 'healthcare' but should more accurately be called 'medical services'.

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Book SynopsisFor many residents of Western nations, COVID-19 was the first time they experienced the effects of an uncontrolled epidemic. This is in part due to a series of little-known regulations that have aimed to protect the global north from epidemic threats for the last two centuries, starting with International Sanitary Conferences in 1851 and culminating in the present with the International Health Regulations, which organize epidemic responses through the World Health Organization. Unlike other equity-focused global health initiatives, their mission—to establish "the maximum protections from infectious disease with the minimum effect on trade and traffic"—has remained the same since their founding. Using this as his starting point, Alexandre White reveals the Western capitalist interests, racism and xenophobia, and political power plays underpinning the regulatory efforts that came out of the project to manage the international spread of infectious disease. He examines how these regulations are formatted; how their framers conceive of epidemic spread; and the types of bodies and spaces it is suggested that these regulations map onto. Proposing a modified reinterpretation of Edward Said's concept of orientalism, White invites us to consider "epidemic orientalism" as a framework within which to explore the imperial and colonial roots of modern epidemic disease control.Trade Review"White writes critically and necessarily on the historical actions taken to prevent the spread of infectious disease. With great care, he deftly unpacks the racial and economic costs of global health initiatives and examines the ideals behind their genesis. The book is a remarkable and necessary re-thinking of medical history through the lens of 'epidemic orientalism'."—Hollie Sherwood-Martin, The Lancet Infectious DiseasesTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Epidemic Orientalism 2. The International Sanitary Conventions at a Colonial Scale 3. Epidemics under the WHO 4. The Battle to Police Disease 5. Epidemics, Power, and the Global Management of Disease Risk 6. Pricing Pandemics Conclusion

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Book SynopsisBreast cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers and a leading cause of death for women worldwide. With advances in molecular engineering in the 1980s, hopes began to rise that a non-toxic and non-invasive treatment for breast cancer could be developed. These hopes were stoked by the researchers, biotech companies, and analysts who worked to make sense of the uncertainties during product development. In Making Sense Sophie Mützel traces this emergence of "innovative breast cancer therapeutics" from the late 1980s up to 2010, through the lens of the narratives of the involved actors. Combining theories of economic and cultural sociology, Mützel shows how stories are integral for the emergence of new markets; stories of the future create a market of expectations prior to any existing products; stories also help to create categories on what such a new market and its products are about. Making Sense uses thousands of press statements, media reports, scientific reports, and financial and industry analyses, and combines qualitative and large-scale computational text analyses, to illustrate these mechanisms, presenting a fresh view of how life-prolonging innovations can be turned into market products. Trade Review"Mützel brilliantly connects market emergence and creation of a market of expectations in a book that defines the next level of excitement in theorizing entanglements of structure, culture, and meaning."—Ronald Breiger, University of Arizona"Deftly interweaving text analyses and computational methods to examine thousands of stories, Mützel fashions a virtuoso example of relational sociology."—Woody Powell, Stanford University"Making Sense makes a seminal contribution to the understanding of markets and innovation processes."—Jens Beckert, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne"By focusing on the role of stories in market emergence and by combining qualitative and computational text analysis, Making Sense—as Mützel highlights in the conclusions—partakes in the debates among economic sociologists concerning the relevance of culture in market emergence and how to measure it.... Making Sense offers readers the opportunity to approach the topic through a fascinating methodology."—Penelope K. Hardy, H-Sci-Med-Tech"Indeed, Mützel's book can be read as much for its substantive contributions as it can be for its method. This text is innovative in its approach to analysis through its combination of close textual analysis to study meaning-making processes, alongside its deployment of computational methods to understand the macro discursive trajectories and patterns in meaning making in breast cancer therapeutics over two decades."—Melanie Jeske, Social ForcesTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Markets and Stories 2. Breast Cancer Therapies and Innovation 3. A Market of Expectations 4. Making Sense of a Market 5. Patterns in Meaning-Making: Categories over Time Conclusion: Markets from Stories

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Book SynopsisWhen Misfortune Becomes Injustice surveys the progress and challenges in deploying human rights to advance health and social equality over recent decades. Alicia Ely Yamin weaves together theory and firsthand experience in a compelling narrative of how evolving legal norms, empirical knowledge, and development paradigms have interacted in the realization of health rights, and challenges us to consider why these advances have failed to produce greater equality within and between nations. In this revised and expanded second edition, Yamin incorporates crucial lessons learned about the state of global health equity and public health systems during the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating just how incompatible the current institutionalized world order—based on neoliberal, financialized capitalism—is with one in which the rights of diverse people around the globe can be realized. COVID-19 struck a world that had been shaped by decades of disinvestment in public health, health systems, and social protection, as well as privatization of wealth and gaping social inequalities within and between countries, and the evident crisis of confidence in the capacity of democratic political institutions and global governance was deepened by the pandemic. Yamin argues that transformative human rights praxis in health calls for addressing issues of structural inequality and political economy, and working across disciplinary silos through networks and social movements.Trade Review"In an increasingly unequal, fragmented, and unaccountable global order in which intellectual property rights trump health rights, this extraordinary book is a powerful call – by a scholar-activist dedicated to converting 'misfortune to be endured into injustice to be remedied' – to pursue human rights transformatively, to advance connection, dignity, equality, and social justice."—Jackie Dugard, Columbia University"This book makes you believe in the power of invoking human rights to advance health justice, especially if you're doubtful, despondent, or simply new to the topic. It is filled with stories that ignite a fire in you to do something, and insights to think through what you might do."—Seye Abimbola, University of Sydney"Alicia Yamin is able to combine, in a way that very few authors can, a sensitive and empathetic account of the tragic consequences of the widespread denial of the right to health with a deeply informed critique of global health policies. This book offers not only deep insights into the struggles to achieve health and social equality, but explains in highly readable and accessible terms what needs to be done. A wonderful read and an inspired guide."—Philip Alston, Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University and former UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights (2014-2020)"Yamin's book is a story of hope and the resilience that highlights how individuals, communities, and societies can confront power asymmetries and shift them to realise their health and human rights. The book provides a compelling account for students of health and human rights and for advocates on how human rights can be applied to transform the narrative from 'misfortune to be endured' to one of 'injustice to be remedied'."—Rajat Khosla, The Lancet"Yamin's book is a 'must read' for those emerged in the struggle for a healthy society, and for students of any stage of learning who seek to understand the history of and the potential of the human right to health."—Louise C. Ivers, ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin AmericaPraise for the first edition "Yamin draws on years of practical field experience to speak with unique authority among human rights scholars about the global and national dynamics that systematically produce poverty and health inequalities across the world."—Paul E. Farmer, Harvard University, and Co-Founder and Chief Strategist of Partners In HealthTable of ContentsIntroduction: Allegorizing the World Chapter 1: Indignation and Injustice Chapter 2: The Significances of Suffering Chapter 3: Diverging Parables of Progress Chapter 4: Dystopian Modernization Chapter 5: Global Crises, Pandemics, and Norms Chapter 6: Inequality, Democracy, and Health Rights Chapter 7: Power, Politics, and Knowledge Conclusions: The Struggle for the World We Want

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Book SynopsisAn eye-opening and compelling ethnography about how doctors make decisions The oath that doctors take to "do no harm" suggests that patient welfare is at the center of what it means to be a successful medical professional. It is also understood, however, that hospitals are not only vessels for medical care—they are businesses, educational institutions, and complex bureaucracies with intricate codes of etiquette that dictate how each staff member should approach situations with patients. In Conflicted Care, Hyeyoung Oh Nelson provides an in-depth look at the decision-making processes of physicians at a large, prestigious academic medical center—that she calls Pacific Medical Center—and finds that more often than not patient wellbeing is only one of several factors governing day-to-day decisions. The steps physicians take reveal a kind of hidden curriculum of the medical world, one that is guided by status and hierarchy, bureaucracy, norms for consulting with third-parties, regulations for interactions with patients, and medical uncertainty. While at an institutional and individual level patient care continues to be integral to everything the physicians do, they are forced to reconcile that vow with these other, often-conflicting internal logics. Harm, Nelson argues, is thus built into the practice of medicine in the United States. This harm can take the form of unnecessary treatments and consultations or inadequate treatment for pain to motivate specialist intervention that would otherwise be resisted. These and other practices have the overall consequence of significantly driving up inpatient care costs, which then results in patients forgoing needed, ongoing treatment once they receive their medical bills. Drawing on a deep ethnography of physicians in the Internal Medicine Service unit, Nelson offers a sharp assessment of current policies aimed at alleviating medical costs and explains why they are ineffective. She concludes by offering novel policy and practice recommendations for health care practitioners, policy makers, and healthcare institutions. Trade Review"This impressive book makes important contributions to our understanding of the different types of pressures that add to the complexity of medical care in the United States today. The close, on-the-ground description of these concerns is a valuable addition to the sociology of medicine and health."—Michael Sauder, author of Engines of Anxiety"[Conflicted Care] presents a valuable framework for a careful evaluation of factors influencing medical decision-making that can be replicated in various settings and time periods. Recommended."—R. A. Brugna, CHOICE"[Conflicted Care] provides a sociological analysis of medical practice in today's clinical setting. It is precisely written and well crafted.... [T]his book is an excellent analysis of contemporary medical decision-making in a complicated work environment."—William C. Cockerham, Contemporary Sociology"By showing that the commodification of medicine comes alive for doctors every single day, [Conflicted Care] makes a powerful case for why medical students should acquire a much better understanding of how finance shapes health care provision."—Guillermina Altomonte, Social ForcesTable of Contents1. Doctors' Dilemmas 2. Conflicting Logics 3. Notation 4. Consultations 5. Discharge 6. Costs

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Book SynopsisBreast cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers and a leading cause of death for women worldwide. With advances in molecular engineering in the 1980s, hopes began to rise that a non-toxic and non-invasive treatment for breast cancer could be developed. These hopes were stoked by the researchers, biotech companies, and analysts who worked to make sense of the uncertainties during product development. In Making Sense Sophie Mützel traces this emergence of "innovative breast cancer therapeutics" from the late 1980s up to 2010, through the lens of the narratives of the involved actors. Combining theories of economic and cultural sociology, Mützel shows how stories are integral for the emergence of new markets; stories of the future create a market of expectations prior to any existing products; stories also help to create categories on what such a new market and its products are about. Making Sense uses thousands of press statements, media reports, scientific reports, and financial and industry analyses, and combines qualitative and large-scale computational text analyses, to illustrate these mechanisms, presenting a fresh view of how life-prolonging innovations can be turned into market products. Trade Review"Mützel brilliantly connects market emergence and creation of a market of expectations in a book that defines the next level of excitement in theorizing entanglements of structure, culture, and meaning."—Ronald Breiger, University of Arizona"Deftly interweaving text analyses and computational methods to examine thousands of stories, Mützel fashions a virtuoso example of relational sociology."—Woody Powell, Stanford University"Making Sense makes a seminal contribution to the understanding of markets and innovation processes."—Jens Beckert, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne"By focusing on the role of stories in market emergence and by combining qualitative and computational text analysis, Making Sense—as Mützel highlights in the conclusions—partakes in the debates among economic sociologists concerning the relevance of culture in market emergence and how to measure it.... Making Sense offers readers the opportunity to approach the topic through a fascinating methodology."—Penelope K. Hardy, H-Sci-Med-Tech"Indeed, Mützel's book can be read as much for its substantive contributions as it can be for its method. This text is innovative in its approach to analysis through its combination of close textual analysis to study meaning-making processes, alongside its deployment of computational methods to understand the macro discursive trajectories and patterns in meaning making in breast cancer therapeutics over two decades."—Melanie Jeske, Social ForcesTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Markets and Stories 2. Breast Cancer Therapies and Innovation 3. A Market of Expectations 4. Making Sense of a Market 5. Patterns in Meaning-Making: Categories over Time Conclusion: Markets from Stories

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Book SynopsisWhen Misfortune Becomes Injustice surveys the progress and challenges in deploying human rights to advance health and social equality over recent decades. Alicia Ely Yamin weaves together theory and firsthand experience in a compelling narrative of how evolving legal norms, empirical knowledge, and development paradigms have interacted in the realization of health rights, and challenges us to consider why these advances have failed to produce greater equality within and between nations. In this revised and expanded second edition, Yamin incorporates crucial lessons learned about the state of global health equity and public health systems during the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating just how incompatible the current institutionalized world order—based on neoliberal, financialized capitalism—is with one in which the rights of diverse people around the globe can be realized. COVID-19 struck a world that had been shaped by decades of disinvestment in public health, health systems, and social protection, as well as privatization of wealth and gaping social inequalities within and between countries, and the evident crisis of confidence in the capacity of democratic political institutions and global governance was deepened by the pandemic. Yamin argues that transformative human rights praxis in health calls for addressing issues of structural inequality and political economy, and working across disciplinary silos through networks and social movements.Trade Review"In an increasingly unequal, fragmented, and unaccountable global order in which intellectual property rights trump health rights, this extraordinary book is a powerful call – by a scholar-activist dedicated to converting 'misfortune to be endured into injustice to be remedied' – to pursue human rights transformatively, to advance connection, dignity, equality, and social justice."—Jackie Dugard, Columbia University"This book makes you believe in the power of invoking human rights to advance health justice, especially if you're doubtful, despondent, or simply new to the topic. It is filled with stories that ignite a fire in you to do something, and insights to think through what you might do."—Seye Abimbola, University of Sydney"Alicia Yamin is able to combine, in a way that very few authors can, a sensitive and empathetic account of the tragic consequences of the widespread denial of the right to health with a deeply informed critique of global health policies. This book offers not only deep insights into the struggles to achieve health and social equality, but explains in highly readable and accessible terms what needs to be done. A wonderful read and an inspired guide."—Philip Alston, Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University and former UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights (2014-2020)"Yamin's book is a story of hope and the resilience that highlights how individuals, communities, and societies can confront power asymmetries and shift them to realise their health and human rights. The book provides a compelling account for students of health and human rights and for advocates on how human rights can be applied to transform the narrative from 'misfortune to be endured' to one of 'injustice to be remedied'."—Rajat Khosla, The Lancet"Yamin's book is a 'must read' for those emerged in the struggle for a healthy society, and for students of any stage of learning who seek to understand the history of and the potential of the human right to health."—Louise C. Ivers, ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin AmericaPraise for the first edition "Yamin draws on years of practical field experience to speak with unique authority among human rights scholars about the global and national dynamics that systematically produce poverty and health inequalities across the world."—Paul E. Farmer, Harvard University, and Co-Founder and Chief Strategist of Partners In HealthTable of ContentsIntroduction: Allegorizing the World Chapter 1: Indignation and Injustice Chapter 2: The Significances of Suffering Chapter 3: Diverging Parables of Progress Chapter 4: Dystopian Modernization Chapter 5: Global Crises, Pandemics, and Norms Chapter 6: Inequality, Democracy, and Health Rights Chapter 7: Power, Politics, and Knowledge Conclusions: The Struggle for the World We Want

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Book SynopsisEach year in India more than two million people fall sick with tuberculosis (TB), an infectious, airborne, and potentially deadly lung disease. The country accounts for almost 30 percent of all TB cases worldwide and well above a third of global deaths from it. Because TB''s prevalence also indicates unfulfilled development promises, its control is an important issue of national concern, wrapped up in questions of postcolonial governance. Drawing on long-term ethnographic engagement with a village in North India and its TB epidemic, Andrew McDowell tells the stories of socially marginalized Dalit (ex-untouchable) farming families afflicted by TB, and the nurses, doctors, quacks, mediums, and mystics who care for them. Each of the book''s chapters centers on a material or metaphorical substancesuch as dust, clouds, and ghoststo understand how breath and airborne illness entangle biological and social life in everyday acts of care for the self, for others, and for the environment.

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Book SynopsisThe experience of illness (both mental and physical) figures prominently in the critical thought and activism of the 1960s and 1970s, though it is largely overshadowed by practices of sexuality. Lisa Diedrich explores how and why illness was indeed so significant to the social, political, and institutional transformation beginning in the 1960s through the emergence of AIDS in the United States. A rich intervention—both theoretical and methodological, political and therapeutic—Indirect Action illuminates the intersection of illness, thought, and politics.Not merely a revision of the history of this time period, Indirect Action expands the historiographical boundaries through which illness and health activism in the United States have been viewed. Diedrich explores the multiplicity illness–thought–politics through an array of subjects: queering the origin story of AIDS activism by recalling its feminist history; exploring health activism and the medical experience; analyzing psychiatry and self-help movements; thinking ecologically about counterpractices of generalism in science and medicine; and considering the experience and event of epilepsy and the witnessing of schizophrenia. Indirect Action places illness in the leading role in the production of thought during the emergence of AIDS, ultimately showing the critical interconnectedness of illness and political and critical thought.Trade Review"Complex yet disarmingly candid, Indirect Action queers the process of history itself, offering a politics of indirectness that is still action, of remembering that doesn't overshadow. Lisa Diedrich is skilled at presenting a turn of thought or analytic term with extraordinary precision and historical weight."—Catherine Belling, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine"Moving through several sites that link illness, thought, and political action, Indirect Action is an engaged, vital, and generative critical practice. Lisa Diedrich demonstrates that when we take a longer view of complex phenomena, we discover the occluded origins and overlooked factors leading to their emergence."—Susan M. Squier, Pennsylvania State University"Beautifully crafted, Indirect Action helps us to see how present activism, specifically health activism, might be done differently. Lisa Diedrich’s gift is her ability to capture the transversal view without losing sight of this important argument: There is enormous power in indirect action."—Lisa Cartwright, University of California, San Diego"Diedrich offers crucial new methodological resources and a rich and compelling counterarchive of theory, activism, and cultural practice that has the potential to unsettle and reorient our approach to understanding health and illness as both historical and urgently ongoing sites of political struggle."—Disability Studies QuarterlyTable of ContentsContents Introduction: Illness-Thought-Activism 1. Doing Queer Love, circa 1985 Snapshot 1: Gregg Bordowitz’s “The Order of Image Production,” 2003 and “Queer Structures of Feeling,” 1993 2. Que(e)rying the Clinic, circa 1970 Snapshot 2: Félix Guattari’s “David Wojnarowicz,” 1989 3. Enacting Clinical Experience, circa 1963 Snapshot 3: Samuel R. Delany’s Happening, 1959 4. Thinking Ecologically, circa 1962 and 1971 Snapshot 4: Frantz Fanon’s “Colonial War and Mental Disorders,” 1961 and Isaac Julien’s “Fanon,” 1996 5. Drawing Epilepsy Snapshot 5: Disability Law Center’s Investigation of Bridgewater State Hospital, 2014, and Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies, 1967 6. Witnessing Schizophrenia Afterimage: ACT-UP’s “Drugs into Bodies,” the Near Present Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe experience of illness (both mental and physical) figures prominently in the critical thought and activism of the 1960s and 1970s, though it is largely overshadowed by practices of sexuality. Lisa Diedrich explores how and why illness was indeed so significant to the social, political, and institutional transformation beginning in the 1960s through the emergence of AIDS in the United States. A rich intervention—both theoretical and methodological, political and therapeutic—Indirect Action illuminates the intersection of illness, thought, and politics.Not merely a revision of the history of this time period, Indirect Action expands the historiographical boundaries through which illness and health activism in the United States have been viewed. Diedrich explores the multiplicity illness–thought–politics through an array of subjects: queering the origin story of AIDS activism by recalling its feminist history; exploring health activism and the medical experience; analyzing psychiatry and self-help movements; thinking ecologically about counterpractices of generalism in science and medicine; and considering the experience and event of epilepsy and the witnessing of schizophrenia. Indirect Action places illness in the leading role in the production of thought during the emergence of AIDS, ultimately showing the critical interconnectedness of illness and political and critical thought.Trade Review"Complex yet disarmingly candid, Indirect Action queers the process of history itself, offering a politics of indirectness that is still action, of remembering that doesn't overshadow. Lisa Diedrich is skilled at presenting a turn of thought or analytic term with extraordinary precision and historical weight."—Catherine Belling, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine"Moving through several sites that link illness, thought, and political action, Indirect Action is an engaged, vital, and generative critical practice. Lisa Diedrich demonstrates that when we take a longer view of complex phenomena, we discover the occluded origins and overlooked factors leading to their emergence."—Susan M. Squier, Pennsylvania State University"Beautifully crafted, Indirect Action helps us to see how present activism, specifically health activism, might be done differently. Lisa Diedrich’s gift is her ability to capture the transversal view without losing sight of this important argument: There is enormous power in indirect action."—Lisa Cartwright, University of California, San Diego"Diedrich offers crucial new methodological resources and a rich and compelling counterarchive of theory, activism, and cultural practice that has the potential to unsettle and reorient our approach to understanding health and illness as both historical and urgently ongoing sites of political struggle."—Disability Studies QuarterlyTable of ContentsContents Introduction: Illness-Thought-Activism 1. Doing Queer Love, circa 1985 Snapshot 1: Gregg Bordowitz’s “The Order of Image Production,” 2003 and “Queer Structures of Feeling,” 1993 2. Que(e)rying the Clinic, circa 1970 Snapshot 2: Félix Guattari’s “David Wojnarowicz,” 1989 3. Enacting Clinical Experience, circa 1963 Snapshot 3: Samuel R. Delany’s Happening, 1959 4. Thinking Ecologically, circa 1962 and 1971 Snapshot 4: Frantz Fanon’s “Colonial War and Mental Disorders,” 1961 and Isaac Julien’s “Fanon,” 1996 5. Drawing Epilepsy Snapshot 5: Disability Law Center’s Investigation of Bridgewater State Hospital, 2014, and Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies, 1967 6. Witnessing Schizophrenia Afterimage: ACT-UP’s “Drugs into Bodies,” the Near Present Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAn exploration of the representational culture of Alzheimer’s disease and how media technologies shape our ideas of cognition and aging With no known cause or cure despite a century of research, Alzheimer’s disease is a true medical mystery. In Mediating Alzheimer’s, Scott Selberg examines the nature of this enduring national health crisis by looking at the disease’s relationship to media and representation. He shows how collective investments in different kinds of media have historically shaped how we understand, treat, and live with this disease. Selberg demonstrates how the cognitive abilities that Alzheimer’s threatens—memory, for example—are integrated into the operations of representational technologies, from Polaroid photographs to Post-its to digital artificial intelligence. Focusing on a wide variety of media technologies, such as neuroimaging, art therapy, virtual reality, and social media, he shows how these cognitively oriented media ultimately help define personhood for people with Alzheimer’s. Media have changed the practices of successful aging in the United States, and Selberg takes us deep into how technologies like digital brain-training and online care networks shape ideas of cognition and healthy aging.Packed with startlingly fresh insights, Mediating Alzheimer’s contributes to debates around bioethics, the labor of caregiving, and a national economy increasingly invested in communication and digital media. Probing the very technologies that promise to save and understand our brains, it gives us new ways of understanding Alzheimer’s disease and aging in America.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Alzheimer’s and Media1. Origin Myths: History, Histology, and Representational Value2. New Media Pioneers: Neuroimaging a National Crisis3. Use It or Lose It: Affirming the Self, Defining the Person4. PET Scans and Polaroids: Anachronizing Personhood5. Dementia in the Museum: Modern Art as Public Care6. Dementia on the Canvas: Art, Therapy, and Creativity’s Values7. Loved Ones: The Capacity for Representation, Recognition, and CareEpilogue: “How to Not Forget”AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisAn exploration of the representational culture of Alzheimer’s disease and how media technologies shape our ideas of cognition and aging With no known cause or cure despite a century of research, Alzheimer’s disease is a true medical mystery. In Mediating Alzheimer’s, Scott Selberg examines the nature of this enduring national health crisis by looking at the disease’s relationship to media and representation. He shows how collective investments in different kinds of media have historically shaped how we understand, treat, and live with this disease. Selberg demonstrates how the cognitive abilities that Alzheimer’s threatens—memory, for example—are integrated into the operations of representational technologies, from Polaroid photographs to Post-its to digital artificial intelligence. Focusing on a wide variety of media technologies, such as neuroimaging, art therapy, virtual reality, and social media, he shows how these cognitively oriented media ultimately help define personhood for people with Alzheimer’s. Media have changed the practices of successful aging in the United States, and Selberg takes us deep into how technologies like digital brain-training and online care networks shape ideas of cognition and healthy aging.Packed with startlingly fresh insights, Mediating Alzheimer’s contributes to debates around bioethics, the labor of caregiving, and a national economy increasingly invested in communication and digital media. Probing the very technologies that promise to save and understand our brains, it gives us new ways of understanding Alzheimer’s disease and aging in America.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Alzheimer’s and Media1. Origin Myths: History, Histology, and Representational Value2. New Media Pioneers: Neuroimaging a National Crisis3. Use It or Lose It: Affirming the Self, Defining the Person4. PET Scans and Polaroids: Anachronizing Personhood5. Dementia in the Museum: Modern Art as Public Care6. Dementia on the Canvas: Art, Therapy, and Creativity’s Values7. Loved Ones: The Capacity for Representation, Recognition, and CareEpilogue: “How to Not Forget”AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisAnalyzing asthma care in the twenty-first centuryAsthma is not a new problem, but today the disease is being reshaped by changing ecologies, healthcare systems, medical sciences, and built environments. A global epidemic, asthma (and our efforts to control it) demands an analysis attentive to its complexity, its contextual nature, and the care practices that emerge from both. At once clearly written and theoretically insightful, Breathtaking provides a sweeping ethnographic account of asthma’s many dimensions through the lived experiences of people who suffer from disordered breathing, as well as by considering their support networks, from secondary school teachers and coaches, to breathing educators and new smartphone applications designed for asthma control. Against the backdrop of unbreathable environments, Alison Kenner describes five modes of care that illustrate how asthma is addressed across different sociocultural scales. These modes of care often work in combination, building from or preceding one another. Tensions also exist between them, a point reflected by Kenner’s description of the structural conditions and material rhythms that shape everyday breathing, chronic disease, and our surrounding environments. She argues that new modes of distributed, collective care practices are needed to address asthma as a critical public health issue in the time of climate change.Trade Review"This elegant first monograph from the Asthma Files Project is written simply for all audiences and provides five practical recommendations. Breathtaking is social science at its best: experiential, explanatory, critical, and providing ways forward. Alison Kenner herself is an active participant as community social-scientist and as partner to someone who suffers disordered breathing. She guides us vividly across scales and registers."—Michael M.J. Fischer, author of Anthropology in the Meantime"Breathtaking is a sweeping ethnographic account of asthma and its treatments that expertly traverses questions of lived experience, medical technology, and critical ecology as they bear on the epidemic of disordered breathing. Beautifully written and poignant, this book makes a robust contribution to our understanding of the health effects of environmental degradation and climate change, deepens the critiques of biomedicalization, and heralds the promise of complementary and alternative medicine."—Anthony Ryan Hatch, author of Blood Sugar"Breathtaking is an engrossing read."—CHOICE"Breathtaking presents a compelling and very readable ethnographic overview of the ways that asthma is grappled with across a variety of 21st century American contexts. This book offers an insightful and multi-faceted account of a condition that affects so many around the world."—Somatosphere"Overall, Breathtaking takes asthma from the biomedical world, and using a multi-sited ethnography, traces connections between the experience of asthma, the environment and our bodies, allowing us to imagine new carescapes that could make the world more breathable."—LSE Review of Books"In the absence of swift and uncompromising action on the part of US legislators to combat climate change, Kenner advocates democratizing access to affordable health care; integrating breathing training into the doctor’s toolkit; and enacting policy, at all levels of government, to improve the indoor environments in which we spend the majority of our time."—H-EnvironmentTable of ContentsIntroduction1. Attuning to Asthma in Time and Place2. Three Modes of Control as Asthma Care3. Counting on Breath: Making Time with Respiratory Retraining4. The Datafication of Care5. Public Health Carescapes for Climate ChangeConclusionAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisA trenchant analysis of the dark side of regulatory life-making today In their seemingly relentless pursuit of life, do contemporary U.S. “biocultures”—where biomedicine extends beyond the formal institutions of the clinic, hospital, and lab to everyday cultural practices—also engage in a deadly endeavor? Challenging us to question their implications, Deadly Biocultures shows that efforts to “make live” are accompanied by the twin operation of “let die”: they validate and enhance lives seen as economically viable, self-sustaining, productive, and oriented toward the future and optimism while reinforcing inequitable distributions of life based on race, class, gender, and dis/ability. Affirming life can obscure death, create deadly conditions, and even kill.Deadly Biocultures examines the affirmation to hope, target, thrive, secure, and green in the respective biocultures of cancer, race-based health, fatness, aging, and the afterlife. Its chapters focus on specific practices, technologies, or techniques that ostensibly affirm life and suggest life’s inextricable links to capital but that also engender a politics of death and erasure. The authors ultimately ask: what alternative social forms and individual practices might be mapped onto or intersect with biomedicine for more equitable biofutures?Trade Review"Nadine Ehlers and Shiloh Krupar have written a brilliant book about the Janus-faced nature of neoliberal biopolitics. Focusing on a diverse range of topics, from race-based medicine to the ‘war on cancer,’ they superbly show how practices and technologies aimed at fostering life in liberal democratic regimes perversely produce vulnerability, death-in-life, and even death itself."—Jonathan Xavier Inda, author of Racial Prescriptions: Pharmaceuticals, Difference, and the Politics of Life"Deadly Biocultures is a highly original and innovative text which aims to shed light on the dual nature of neoliberal biopolitics."—Ethnic and Racial Studies "Deadly Biocultures offers a timely and provocative contribution to the rich literature on biopolitics from which it draws. Ehlers and Krupar provide unique examples and deep engagement with a wide array of American biocultures."—Disability Studies Quarterly

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Book SynopsisA major new reading of a U.S. public health system shaped by fraught perceptions of culture, race, and criminality At the heart of Archiving Medical Violence is an interrogation of the notions of national and scientific progress, marking an advance in scholarship that shows how such violence is both an engine of medical progress and, more broadly, the production of empire. It reads the medical archive through a lens that centers how it is produced, remembered, and contested within cultural production and critical memory. In this innovative and interdisciplinary book, Christopher Perreira argues that it is in the contradictions of settler colonialism and racial capitalism that we find how medical violence is narrated as a public good. He presents case studies from across a range of locations—Hawai‘i, California, Louisiana, Guatemala—and historical periods from the nineteenth century on. Examining national and scientific conceptions of progress through the lens of medicine and public health, he places official archives in dialogue with visual and literary works, patient writing, and more. Archiving Medical Violence explores the contested public terrains for narrating value and vulnerabilities, bodies and geographical locations. Ultimately, Perreira reveals for us a medical imaginary built on racialized criminality driving contemporary politics of citizenship, memory, and identity. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.Trade Review "In this deeply researched and sweeping examination of medical violence across time, space, and scale, Christopher Perreira takes us on a journey that unsettles progress narratives about medicine and asks us to reckon with the everyday forms of harm embedded in a profession purportedly dedicated to healing. Ultimately, Archiving Medical Violence forces us to remember all those devalued as prisoners and revalued as patients and to reimagine whose stories and lives matter for anticarceral futures animated by justice."—Ruha Benjamin, author of Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want "Examining the ways in which human bodies are rendered subject to biomedicine’s epistemological and material violence, Christopher Perreira highlights the discursive technology of the ‘prisoner-patient,’ a figure which bears the histories of white supremacy and settler colonialism. Contemporary biomedicine would do well to engage Archiving Medical Violence to think through its reliance on the same racial–carceral logics that places like prisons and segregated schools rely on, which in turn might provide new public policies to address the deep health care inequalities that are the long-term effects of the violences that Perreira’s book reveals."—James Kyung-Jin Lee, director, Center for Medical Humanities, University of California, Irvine Table of Contents Contents Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Archiving Medical Consent 1. Medical Violence, Archival Fictions 2. Memory, Memoir, and the Carville Leprosarium 3. Imagining Medical Archives at Olive View Epilogue: Futures of Medical Violence Notes Index

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Book SynopsisA major new reading of a U.S. public health system shaped by fraught perceptions of culture, race, and criminality At the heart of Archiving Medical Violence is an interrogation of the notions of national and scientific progress, marking an advance in scholarship that shows how such violence is both an engine of medical progress and, more broadly, the production of empire. It reads the medical archive through a lens that centers how it is produced, remembered, and contested within cultural production and critical memory. In this innovative and interdisciplinary book, Christopher Perreira argues that it is in the contradictions of settler colonialism and racial capitalism that we find how medical violence is narrated as a public good. He presents case studies from across a range of locations—Hawai‘i, California, Louisiana, Guatemala—and historical periods from the nineteenth century on. Examining national and scientific conceptions of progress through the lens of medicine and public health, he places official archives in dialogue with visual and literary works, patient writing, and more. Archiving Medical Violence explores the contested public terrains for narrating value and vulnerabilities, bodies and geographical locations. Ultimately, Perreira reveals for us a medical imaginary built on racialized criminality driving contemporary politics of citizenship, memory, and identity. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.Trade Review "In this deeply researched and sweeping examination of medical violence across time, space, and scale, Christopher Perreira takes us on a journey that unsettles progress narratives about medicine and asks us to reckon with the everyday forms of harm embedded in a profession purportedly dedicated to healing. Ultimately, Archiving Medical Violence forces us to remember all those devalued as prisoners and revalued as patients and to reimagine whose stories and lives matter for anticarceral futures animated by justice."—Ruha Benjamin, author of Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want "Examining the ways in which human bodies are rendered subject to biomedicine’s epistemological and material violence, Christopher Perreira highlights the discursive technology of the ‘prisoner-patient,’ a figure which bears the histories of white supremacy and settler colonialism. Contemporary biomedicine would do well to engage Archiving Medical Violence to think through its reliance on the same racial–carceral logics that places like prisons and segregated schools rely on, which in turn might provide new public policies to address the deep health care inequalities that are the long-term effects of the violences that Perreira’s book reveals."—James Kyung-Jin Lee, director, Center for Medical Humanities, University of California, Irvine Table of Contents Contents Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Archiving Medical Consent 1. Medical Violence, Archival Fictions 2. Memory, Memoir, and the Carville Leprosarium 3. Imagining Medical Archives at Olive View Epilogue: Futures of Medical Violence Notes Index

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Book SynopsisA critical investigation into the use of psychotropic drugs to pacify and control inmates and other captives in the vast U.S. prison, military, and welfare systemsFor at least four decades, U.S. prisons and jails have aggressively turned to psychotropic drugs—antidepressants, antipsychotics, sedatives, and tranquilizers—to silence inmates, whether or not they have been diagnosed with mental illnesses. In Silent Cells, Anthony Ryan Hatch demonstrates that the pervasive use of psychotropic drugs has not only defined and enabled mass incarceration but has also become central to other forms of captivity, including foster homes, military and immigrant detention centers, and nursing homes. Silent Cells shows how, in shockingly large numbers, federal, state, and local governments and government-authorized private agencies pacify people with drugs, uncovering patterns of institutional violence that threaten basic human and civil rights. Drawing on publicly available records, Hatch unearths the coercive ways that psychotropics serve to manufacture compliance and docility, practices hidden behind layers of state secrecy, medical complicity, and corporate profiteering.Psychotropics, Hatch shows, are integral to “technocorrectional” policies devised to minimize public costs and increase the private profitability of mass captivity while guaranteeing public safety and national security. This broad indictment of psychotropics is therefore animated by a radical counterfactual question: would incarceration on the scale practiced in the United States even be possible without psychotropics?Trade Review"For residents of state-managed institutions, the American Dream too often has been warped into a drug-addled nightmare. Combining novel insights supported by rigorous scholarship with fresh, accessible writing, Anthony Ryan Hatch presents a powerful indictment of imposing psychotropics upon the caged powerless, building an unimpugnable case that unveils a deeply troubling pattern and also affords us the chance to end it."—Harriet A. Washington, author of Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present "Silent Cells is a ground-breaking study of psychiatric violence in U.S. prisons—not as an exception to the rule, but as a normalized practice of prison management without which mass incarceration would be impossible to sustain. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the material conditions of the U.S. carceral state."—Lisa Guenther, author of Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives"Hatch champions a more recent neologism: necropolitics, a system for managing the socially dead." —Inside Higher Education

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Book SynopsisA critical investigation into the use of psychotropic drugs to pacify and control inmates and other captives in the vast U.S. prison, military, and welfare systemsFor at least four decades, U.S. prisons and jails have aggressively turned to psychotropic drugs—antidepressants, antipsychotics, sedatives, and tranquilizers—to silence inmates, whether or not they have been diagnosed with mental illnesses. In Silent Cells, Anthony Ryan Hatch demonstrates that the pervasive use of psychotropic drugs has not only defined and enabled mass incarceration but has also become central to other forms of captivity, including foster homes, military and immigrant detention centers, and nursing homes. Silent Cells shows how, in shockingly large numbers, federal, state, and local governments and government-authorized private agencies pacify people with drugs, uncovering patterns of institutional violence that threaten basic human and civil rights. Drawing on publicly available records, Hatch unearths the coercive ways that psychotropics serve to manufacture compliance and docility, practices hidden behind layers of state secrecy, medical complicity, and corporate profiteering.Psychotropics, Hatch shows, are integral to “technocorrectional” policies devised to minimize public costs and increase the private profitability of mass captivity while guaranteeing public safety and national security. This broad indictment of psychotropics is therefore animated by a radical counterfactual question: would incarceration on the scale practiced in the United States even be possible without psychotropics?Trade Review"For residents of state-managed institutions, the American Dream too often has been warped into a drug-addled nightmare. Combining novel insights supported by rigorous scholarship with fresh, accessible writing, Anthony Ryan Hatch presents a powerful indictment of imposing psychotropics upon the caged powerless, building an unimpugnable case that unveils a deeply troubling pattern and also affords us the chance to end it."—Harriet A. Washington, author of Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present "Silent Cells is a ground-breaking study of psychiatric violence in U.S. prisons—not as an exception to the rule, but as a normalized practice of prison management without which mass incarceration would be impossible to sustain. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the material conditions of the U.S. carceral state."—Lisa Guenther, author of Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives"Hatch champions a more recent neologism: necropolitics, a system for managing the socially dead." —Inside Higher Education

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Book SynopsisMeth cooks practice late industrial alchemy—transforming base materials, like lithium batteries and camping fuel, into gold Meth alchemists all over the United States tap the occulted potencies of industrial chemical and big pharma products to try to cure the ills of precarious living: underemployment, insecurity, and the feeling of idleness. Meth fires up your attention and makes repetitive tasks pleasurable, whether it’s factory work or tinkering at home. Users are awake for days and feel exuberant and invincible. In one person’s words, they “get more life.” The Alchemy of Meth is a nonfiction storybook about St. Jude County, Missouri, a place in decomposition, where the toxic inheritance of deindustrialization meets the violent hope of this drug-making cottage industry. Jason Pine bases the book on fieldwork among meth cooks, recovery professionals, pastors, public defenders, narcotics agents, and pharmaceutical executives. Here, St. Jude is not reduced to its meth problem but Pine looks at meth through materials, landscapes, and institutions: the sprawling context that makes methlabs possible. The Alchemy of Meth connects DIY methlabs to big pharma’s superlabs, illicit speed to the legalized speed sold as ADHD medication, uniquely implicating the author’s own story in the narrative. By the end of the book, the backdrop of St. Jude becomes the foreground. It could be a story about life and work anywhere in the United States, where it seems no one is truly clean and all are complicit in the exploitation of their precious resources in exchange for a livable present—or even the hope of a future.Trade Review"The Alchemy of Meth is a sui generis masterpiece. Jason Pine's kaleidoscopic vision provides a portrait of the American Dream seen from a place where instead something else flourishes: home methamphetamine production. He depicts both a human tragedy and the socioeconomic pressures that have made tragedy inevitable. The contemporary political moment makes this book particularly timely, but its grace and power will remain timeless."—Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena"This is a truly remarkable ethnography of the affects, economies, and materialities of methamphetamine production (and consumption) in the decaying heartlands of the United States. Fearlessly experimental yet compulsively readable, it picks its way through debris-strewn landscapes, interweaving voices, stories, and idioms (from legal documents to poetry), encountering not only ruin and devastation but also strangeness, magic, and even, on occasion, hope."—Stuart McLean, University of Minnesota"Jason Pine’s writing is alchemical. By fusing his tales of ordinary citizens in Missouri cooking meth, he cooks up a story that goes deep and gives us a raw taste of the decaying fabric of American life today."—Norman Ohler, author of Blitzed and The Bohemians"By weaving together vignettes culled from interviews of users, cooks, family members of the affected, enforcement agents, and pharmaceutical company executives, Pine traced the topography of meth as its use expanded dramatically during the early 21st century."—CityLab"The Alchemy of Meth is like the best of person-centred ethnographies: humane, deliberate, and impactful."—Anthropological Forum

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Book SynopsisMeth cooks practice late industrial alchemy—transforming base materials, like lithium batteries and camping fuel, into gold Meth alchemists all over the United States tap the occulted potencies of industrial chemical and big pharma products to try to cure the ills of precarious living: underemployment, insecurity, and the feeling of idleness. Meth fires up your attention and makes repetitive tasks pleasurable, whether it’s factory work or tinkering at home. Users are awake for days and feel exuberant and invincible. In one person’s words, they “get more life.” The Alchemy of Meth is a nonfiction storybook about St. Jude County, Missouri, a place in decomposition, where the toxic inheritance of deindustrialization meets the violent hope of this drug-making cottage industry. Jason Pine bases the book on fieldwork among meth cooks, recovery professionals, pastors, public defenders, narcotics agents, and pharmaceutical executives. Here, St. Jude is not reduced to its meth problem but Pine looks at meth through materials, landscapes, and institutions: the sprawling context that makes methlabs possible. The Alchemy of Meth connects DIY methlabs to big pharma’s superlabs, illicit speed to the legalized speed sold as ADHD medication, uniquely implicating the author’s own story in the narrative. By the end of the book, the backdrop of St. Jude becomes the foreground. It could be a story about life and work anywhere in the United States, where it seems no one is truly clean and all are complicit in the exploitation of their precious resources in exchange for a livable present—or even the hope of a future.Trade Review"The Alchemy of Meth is a sui generis masterpiece. Jason Pine's kaleidoscopic vision provides a portrait of the American Dream seen from a place where instead something else flourishes: home methamphetamine production. He depicts both a human tragedy and the socioeconomic pressures that have made tragedy inevitable. The contemporary political moment makes this book particularly timely, but its grace and power will remain timeless."—Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena"This is a truly remarkable ethnography of the affects, economies, and materialities of methamphetamine production (and consumption) in the decaying heartlands of the United States. Fearlessly experimental yet compulsively readable, it picks its way through debris-strewn landscapes, interweaving voices, stories, and idioms (from legal documents to poetry), encountering not only ruin and devastation but also strangeness, magic, and even, on occasion, hope."—Stuart McLean, University of Minnesota"Jason Pine’s writing is alchemical. By fusing his tales of ordinary citizens in Missouri cooking meth, he cooks up a story that goes deep and gives us a raw taste of the decaying fabric of American life today."—Norman Ohler, author of Blitzed and The Bohemians"By weaving together vignettes culled from interviews of users, cooks, family members of the affected, enforcement agents, and pharmaceutical company executives, Pine traced the topography of meth as its use expanded dramatically during the early 21st century."—CityLab"The Alchemy of Meth is like the best of person-centred ethnographies: humane, deliberate, and impactful."—Anthropological Forum

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Book SynopsisA personal account of the aging body and advanced technologies by a preeminent philosopher of technologyMedical Technics is a rigorous examination of how medical progress has modified our worlds and contributed to a virtual revolution in longevity. Don Ihde offers a unique autobiographical tour of medical events experienced in a decade, beginning in his 70s. Ihde offers experiential and postphenomenological analyses of technologies such as sonography and microsurgery, and ultimately asks what it means to increasingly become a cyborg. Forerunners: Ideas FirstShort books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead

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Book SynopsisA bold new indictment of the racialization of science Decades of data cannot be ignored: African American adults are far more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than white adults. But has science gone so far in racializing diabetes as to undermine the search for solutions? In a rousing indictment of the idea that notions of biological race should drive scientific inquiry, Sweetness in the Blood provides an ethnographic picture of biotechnology’s framings of Type 2 diabetes risk and race and, importantly, offers a critical examination of the assumptions behind the recruitment of African American and African-descent populations for Type 2 diabetes research.James Doucet-Battle begins with a historical overview of how diabetes has been researched and framed racially over the past century, chronicling one company’s efforts to recruit African Americans to test their new diabetes risk-score algorithm with the aim of increasing the clinical and market value of the firm’s technology. He considers African American reticence about participation in biomedical research and examines race and health disparities in light of advances in genomic sequencing technology. Doucet-Battle concludes by emphasizing that genomic research into sub-Saharan ancestry in fact underlines the importance of analyzing gender before attempting to understand the notion of race. No disease reveals this more than Type 2 diabetes.Sweetness in the Blood challenges the notion that the best approach to understanding, managing, and curing Type 2 diabetes is through the lens of race. It also transforms how we think about sugar, filling a neglected gap between the sugar- and molasses-sweetened past of the enslaved African laborer and the high-fructose corn syrup- and corporate-fed body of the contemporary consumer-laborer.Trade Review"James Doucet-Battle has given us a brilliant book that uncovers the networks that support the pharmacapitalism of Type 2 diabetes. In this important study, we see the impact of economizing risk through biomarketing. Sweetness in the Blood is a must-read because it underscores the sacrificial labor of Black people as they become the targets of risk assessments for Type 2 diabetes and role that the technology plays in constructing ‘racial risk.’"—Dána-Ain Davis, author of Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth"Sweetness in the Blood is an indictment, not only of the global sugar industry, but of medical and biotech industries that insist on using biological race as a lens to explain and predict health disparities. Traversing breathtaking terrain, from sugar plantations to pharmaceutical board rooms, this is a must-read for everyone who wants to understand how social inequity gets under the skin and for all those committed to health justice."—Ruha Benjamin, author of Race After Technology"Sweetness in the Blood adds nuance to our understanding of race and chronic disease prevention management."—Ethnic and Racial Studies"In Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk, and Type 2 Diabetes, James Doucet-Battle offers a sweeping indictment of ways in which racial essentialism infiltrates the science and industry surrounding modern diabetes."—Social Forces"In this important contribution to deconstructing the intersections of race, capital, and disease, Doucet-Battle employs an ethnographic approach to explore the racialization of a disease, showing how the combined enterprises of pharma and medicine have constructed being African American as a risk. "—CHOICE"Doucet-Battle successfully presses his readers to question a handful of taken-for-granted concepts (i.e., race, risk, and diabetes). In that respect, Sweetness in the Blood is a wonderful example of the sociological craft. "—American Journal of SociologyTable of ContentsContentsAbbreviationsIntroduction. Sugar’s Racial Project: From Slavery to Diabetes1. The At-Risk Ethnographer of Sweetness2. Sweet Blood: Inventing the Prediabetic3. Algorithms of Risk and Race: Recruiting Black Risk and Marketing Black Bodies4. A Dark Past in Present Light: The Black Church, Medicine, and Trust5. The Ascension of the Black Matriarch: The Search for Metabolic AfricaConclusion. The Racialized Pancreas: Toward Biosocial JusticeAcknowledgmentsA Subversive GlossaryNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisA bold new indictment of the racialization of science Decades of data cannot be ignored: African American adults are far more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than white adults. But has science gone so far in racializing diabetes as to undermine the search for solutions? In a rousing indictment of the idea that notions of biological race should drive scientific inquiry, Sweetness in the Blood provides an ethnographic picture of biotechnology’s framings of Type 2 diabetes risk and race and, importantly, offers a critical examination of the assumptions behind the recruitment of African American and African-descent populations for Type 2 diabetes research.James Doucet-Battle begins with a historical overview of how diabetes has been researched and framed racially over the past century, chronicling one company’s efforts to recruit African Americans to test their new diabetes risk-score algorithm with the aim of increasing the clinical and market value of the firm’s technology. He considers African American reticence about participation in biomedical research and examines race and health disparities in light of advances in genomic sequencing technology. Doucet-Battle concludes by emphasizing that genomic research into sub-Saharan ancestry in fact underlines the importance of analyzing gender before attempting to understand the notion of race. No disease reveals this more than Type 2 diabetes.Sweetness in the Blood challenges the notion that the best approach to understanding, managing, and curing Type 2 diabetes is through the lens of race. It also transforms how we think about sugar, filling a neglected gap between the sugar- and molasses-sweetened past of the enslaved African laborer and the high-fructose corn syrup- and corporate-fed body of the contemporary consumer-laborer.Trade Review"James Doucet-Battle has given us a brilliant book that uncovers the networks that support the pharmacapitalism of Type 2 diabetes. In this important study, we see the impact of economizing risk through biomarketing. Sweetness in the Blood is a must-read because it underscores the sacrificial labor of Black people as they become the targets of risk assessments for Type 2 diabetes and role that the technology plays in constructing ‘racial risk.’"—Dána-Ain Davis, author of Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth"Sweetness in the Blood is an indictment, not only of the global sugar industry, but of medical and biotech industries that insist on using biological race as a lens to explain and predict health disparities. Traversing breathtaking terrain, from sugar plantations to pharmaceutical board rooms, this is a must-read for everyone who wants to understand how social inequity gets under the skin and for all those committed to health justice."—Ruha Benjamin, author of Race After Technology"Sweetness in the Blood adds nuance to our understanding of race and chronic disease prevention management."—Ethnic and Racial Studies"In Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk, and Type 2 Diabetes, James Doucet-Battle offers a sweeping indictment of ways in which racial essentialism infiltrates the science and industry surrounding modern diabetes."—Social Forces"In this important contribution to deconstructing the intersections of race, capital, and disease, Doucet-Battle employs an ethnographic approach to explore the racialization of a disease, showing how the combined enterprises of pharma and medicine have constructed being African American as a risk. "—CHOICE"Doucet-Battle successfully presses his readers to question a handful of taken-for-granted concepts (i.e., race, risk, and diabetes). In that respect, Sweetness in the Blood is a wonderful example of the sociological craft. "—American Journal of SociologyTable of ContentsContentsAbbreviationsIntroduction. Sugar’s Racial Project: From Slavery to Diabetes1. The At-Risk Ethnographer of Sweetness2. Sweet Blood: Inventing the Prediabetic3. Algorithms of Risk and Race: Recruiting Black Risk and Marketing Black Bodies4. A Dark Past in Present Light: The Black Church, Medicine, and Trust5. The Ascension of the Black Matriarch: The Search for Metabolic AfricaConclusion. The Racialized Pancreas: Toward Biosocial JusticeAcknowledgmentsA Subversive GlossaryNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisExamines the complexity and the humanity of the opioid epidemic America’s opioid epidemic continues to ravage families and communities, despite intense media coverage, federal legislation, criminal prosecutions, and harm reduction efforts to prevent overdose deaths. More than 450,000 Americans have died from opioid overdoses since the late 1990s. In Opioid Reckoning, Amy C. Sullivan explores the complexity of the crisis through firsthand accounts of people grappling with the reverberating effects of stigma, treatment, and recovery. Nearly everyone in the United States has been touched in some way by the opioid epidemic, including the author and her family. Sullivan uses her own story as a launching point to learn how the opioid epidemic challenged longstanding recovery protocols in Minnesota, a state internationally recognized for pioneering addiction treatment. By centering the voices of many people who have experienced opioid use, treatment, recovery, and loss, Sullivan exposes the devastating effects of a one-size-fits-all approach toward treatment of opioid dependency. Taking a clear-eyed, nonjudgmental perspective of every aspect of these issues—drug use, parenting, harm reduction, medication, abstinence, and stigma—Opioid Reckoning questions current treatment models, healthcare inequities, and the criminal justice system. Sullivan also imagines a future where anyone suffering an opioid-use disorder has access to the individualized care, without judgment, available to those with other health problems. Opioid Reckoning presents a captivating look at how the state that invented “rehab” addresses the challenges of the opioid epidemic and its overdose deaths while also taking readers into the intimate lives of families, medical and social work professionals, grassroots activists, and many others impacted by the crisis who contribute their insights and potential solutions. In sharing these stories and chronicling their lessons, Sullivan offers a path forward that cultivates empathy, love, and hope for anyone affected by chaotic drug use and its harms.Trade Review "From the Land of 10,000 Rehabs comes this generous and heartening testament to the power of empathy and the wisdom of harm reduction. Living with Amy Sullivan’s stories of ‘trauma parenting,’ we are compelled to take stock of how our own lives and losses intertwine with those who people these pages."—Nancy D. Campbell, author of OD: Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose "An important contribution that documents the lives of those faced with America's overdose crisis in the state that originated the twelve-step/abstinence treatment approach. Addiction care must change—and this book shows why."—Maia Szalavitz, author of Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction and Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction "In this timely book, Amy C. Sullivan illuminates how the public health crisis of opioid use disorder cannot be adequately conveyed through abstract statistics. Rather, it is located in childhood bedrooms and around kitchen tables, affecting families and especially mothers. The personal narratives and oral histories Sullivan weaves together tell an indelible story of the trauma, stigma, and, above all, humanity of the experience of addiction and recovery."—Sarah Gollust, University of Minnesota School of Public Health "Dr. Sullivan’s work on behalf of addiction and treatment is remarkable and Opioid Reckoning offers a glimpse into the faces of the epidemic. With heart and soul and considerable scholarship, Sullivan has written a book that offers hope and help for anyone affected by addiction."—Superior Reads "More even than demonstrating empathy for persons affected by abuse, Sullivan models commitment to tackling stigma to best combat the abuse."—CHOICE "Although much of her book tells the stories of Addicts and their families and explores new initiatives in the recovery industry, Sullivan makes clear in the prologue that this isn't only an academic take on an important topic."—Minnesota Alumni Table of ContentsContentsPrologueIntroduction: Opioids, Oral History, and the Rehab State1. Mothering Addiction: Lessons in Trauma Parenting2. Prognosis Cloudy: Who’s to Blame for an Overdose?3. Prescription for Humility: Opioids and Addiction Medicine4. Women of Substance: Harm Reduction in Minnesota5. Dissecting Stigma: Treatment ReimaginedConclusion: My Son, Relapsed and RecoveredAbout the Minnesota Opioid ProjectAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisA personal health crisis, stories from environmental refugees, and our climate in danger prompt a meditation on intimate connections between the health of the body and the health of the ecosystem The body of the earth, beset by a climate in crisis, experiences drought much like the human body experiences thirst, as Ranae Lenor Hanson’s body did as a warning sign of the disease that would change her life: Type 1 diabetes. What if we tended to an ailing ecosystem just as Hanson learned to care for herself in the throes of a chronic medical condition. This is the possibility explored in a work that is at once a memoir of illness and health, a contemplation of the surrounding natural world in distress, and a reflection on the ways these come together in personal, local, and global opportunities for healing.Beginning with memories from a childhood nurtured among the waters of Minnesota, Watershed follows the streams and tributaries that connect us to our world and to each other, as revealed in the life stories of Hanson’s students, Minnesotans driven from their faraway homelands by climate disruption. The book’s currents carry us to threatened mangrove swamps in Saudi Arabia, to drought-stricken Ethiopia, to rocks bearing ancient messages above crooked rivers in northern Minnesota, to a diabetic crisis in an ICU bed at a St. Paul hospital. With the benefit of gentle insight and a broad worldview, Hanson encourages us at every turn to find our own way, to discover how the health of our bodies and the health of the world they inhabit are inextricably linked and how attending, and tending, to their shared distress can lead to a genuine, grounded wellbeing. When, in the grip of a global pandemic, humans drastically change their behavior to preserve human life, we also see how the earth breathes more freely as a result. In light of that lesson, Watershed helps us to consider our place and our part in the health and healing of the world around us. Trade Review "The credo ‘water is life’ has become a key environmental rallying cry in the years since Standing Rock, and this book helps us remember why. It recalls an American past, inhabits a global present, and imagines a working future—it will be an aid to many as they grapple with our difficult moment."—Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and author of The End of Nature "In a direct and often wise voice, through a series of moving, revealing, and entertaining stories, Watershed makes clear the connection between climate change and our own bodies. A difficult task in a culture that ignores the urgency of climate change while denying that human beings are part of nature. Difficult, but needed now while the earth that sustains our bodies is under assault. This book presents us with a paradoxical gift, the idea that we can make use of the aches and pains and illnesses plaguing so many of us to wake up and act in common cause with the earth."—Susan Griffin, author of Woman and Nature "Ranae Hanson’s elegy for the Earth and our bodies speaks of the holy, the sacred. The fates of water, our bodies, our communities are intertwined. She gives voice to the voiceless. She reports on the sacred and challenges us to live our lives knowing that the connection to each other and the Earth is the basis for health, the holy, the sacred."—Carolyn Raffensperger, executive director, Science and Environmental Health Network "We need Watershed now. There’s no book like it. It’s as clear-eyed and immersive as the northern Minnesota waters that birthed it. It’s the story for our time, and just in the nick of time. With courage and tenderness, Ranae Hanson pulls back the curtain to show us that the harm we have wrought on the world is no longer a future problem to be solved. It is here now in our bodies as much as in our watersheds and forests—and in the beloved homelands of her immigrant-refuge students whose voices and stories pierce any doubt, any ill-founded hope that all will be well."—Eric Utne, founder, Utne Reader "Ranae Hanson’s remarkable book is a deep, rich, profoundly personal, and powerful exploration of how we are inseparable from the water that surrounds us, that flows through, around, and beneath our lives. It’s a book that connects us to where we stand, to the place, the watershed, the webs of love, water, family, and nature that hold us throughout our lives. Its roots run deep, its implications even deeper, and it brings many rich gifts for these extraordinary times."—Rob Hopkins, founder, Transition Movement "Such a beautiful blend of Ranae Hanson’s own story and how it connects to the deeper story of environmental damage and climate change. The book gains gravitas and urgency by weaving the impact of environmental crisis on our own human bodies with stories from all over the globe. It shows that we must face this worldwide, systemic issue together now."—Ann Manning, director, Future First Initiatives "Born in northern Minnesota where waters divide, Ranae Hanson has been communicating with the earth with reverence and empathy since early childhood. Decades of conversations are gathered in Watershed, a beautifully written memoir that weaves together explorations of keenly observed impacts of ecologic damage, climate change, and personal illness. Wisdom that Ranae Hanson has gleaned from many years of service to the earth and her students is now available to us all. It is a captivating, cautionary tale urging humility, respect, and action."—Ted Schettler, science director, Science and Environmental Health Network "Watershed is grounded and calming. It brings the full story of ecological disruption into view. Ranae Hanson’s life story combined with an exploration of the real threat and the embodied response that is necessary is a new and important angle to address climate change."—Julia Nerbonne, executive director, Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light "This book took me away from this daily dose of gloom and filled me with a sense of preciousness enabling action that isn’t just reaction. Ranae Hanson’s personal and intimate stories are full of unsentimental love for people, trees, plants, and animals displaced by our political and climate brutality. In the stories told here, those of us who are in true community with the world around, close by and far away, find moments of joy and solace by standing side-by-side near the trauma without averting our eyes. The stories point toward possible sustaining acceptance even in the midst of nightmare realities."—Robert Bosnak, author A Little Course in Dreams "This book is very unique. Much like a memoir peppered with meditations and insights, it’s filled with so many anecdotes and details, it’s easy to relate to Hanson and her somewhat unconventional upbringing."—Rochester Post-Bulletin "Watershed helps us to consider our place and our part in the health and healing of the world around us."—The Thirteen Towns "In a sea of books about the environment and personal health, Hanson’s Watershed demonstrates the remarkable degree to which they are the same topic."—Minnesota Brown "Hanson encourages us to examine our own experiences of place, home, landscape, and watershed."—Land Stewardship Project "Ranea Lenor Hanson’s memoir intertwines reflections about how her body’s health challenges reflect the earth in distress."—Minnesota Women’s Press "The book connects people across generations, cultures, and continents."—Creative Nursing "Ranae Hanson weaves a connection of humanity like a watershed collects the essence of the land it flows through."—Ely Summer Times "Hanson manages to write a memoir that truly captures interconnectedness: between people, cultures, species, and watersheds... the book as a whole feels deeply rooted, with a full and conscious awareness of the issues and challenges inherent to environmental justice. "—ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment Table of ContentsContentsNavigating the Waters of This BookHow to Live1. Where Waters DivideHandholds and Stepping Stones2. Do Not Fall Away3. Pause to SurveyConsider the Need to Stop4. The Pattern of BreathStop. Breathe. Settle.5. ThirstLonging for Water6. Listen and AcceptThe Voice of the Body7. Rely on a Deep, Cool Lake8. Feel the GriefPractice for Mourning9. Connect Humbly10. Accept BothHow to Die11. Bear WitnessCome to Know12. Walk With and Nourish Others13. Water, Plant, and Make SoilComing Home14. Fog15. Miracles, Mystery, and Dreams16. When the Time ComesListen and Prepare17. Return18. May Your Watershed Live – and You with ItRemember the Branches and StonesCoda: Life Principles of the Indigenous People of My Natal WatershedNotes

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Book SynopsisA pointed look at the state of tech-based mental healthcare and what we must do to change it Proponents of technology trumpet it as the solution to the massive increase in the mental distress that confronts our nation. They herald the arrival of algorithms, intelligent chatbots, smartphone applications, telemental healthcare services, and more—but are these technological fixes really as good as they seem? In Therapy Tech, Emma Bedor Hiland presents the first comprehensive study of how technology has transformed mental healthcare, showing that this revolution can’t deliver what it promises.Far from providing a solution, technological mental healthcare perpetuates preexisting disparities while relying on the same failed focus on personal responsibility that has let us down before. Through vivid, in-depth case studies, Therapy Tech reveals these problems, covering issues including psychosurveillance on websites like Facebook and 7 Cups of Tea, shortcomings of popular AI “doctors on demand” like Woebot, Wysa, and Joy, and even how therapists are being conscripted into the gig economy.Featuring a vital coda that brings Therapy Tech up to date for the COVID era, this book is the first to give readers a large-scale analysis of mental health technologies and the cultural changes they have enabled. Both a sobering dissection of the current state of mental health and a necessary warning of where things are headed, Therapy Tech makes an important assertion about how to help those in need of mental health services today.Trade Review"Therapy Tech is a spirited, contrarian take on the idea that technology can solve or mitigate the U.S. mental health care crisis. Emma Bedor Hiland convincingly argues that smartphone wellness apps, telemedicine, and therapeutic chatbots will not cure the structural inequalities of the healthcare system; moreover, these mental health technologies carry insidious neoliberal baggage. A thought-provoking, critical exploration into the cultural life of modern mental health technologies."—Elizabeth J. Donaldson, author of Literatures of Madness: Disability Studies and Mental Health"Clear, concise, and accessible, Therapy Tech wades into the massive digital mental healthcare industry, providing readers with front-line reporting on the most recent episode in America’s long history of health-related consumerism. Emma Bedor Hiland shows that increased development of products and platforms—what she calls ‘technological solutionism’—does not improve access to mental healthcare for historically marginalized and under-resourced poor, rural, and racialized communities, and, if unchecked, will result in intensified forms of ‘psychosurveillance.’"—Michael Rembis, director, Center for Disability Studies, University at BuffaloTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Pursuing a Technological Fix1. Mental Wellness by Smartphone App2. Psychosurveillance3. Chatbots and Therapeutic AI4. Telemental Healthcare5. The Future of Mental Health TechnologiesCOVID CodaAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisA pointed look at the state of tech-based mental healthcare and what we must do to change it Proponents of technology trumpet it as the solution to the massive increase in the mental distress that confronts our nation. They herald the arrival of algorithms, intelligent chatbots, smartphone applications, telemental healthcare services, and more—but are these technological fixes really as good as they seem? In Therapy Tech, Emma Bedor Hiland presents the first comprehensive study of how technology has transformed mental healthcare, showing that this revolution can’t deliver what it promises.Far from providing a solution, technological mental healthcare perpetuates preexisting disparities while relying on the same failed focus on personal responsibility that has let us down before. Through vivid, in-depth case studies, Therapy Tech reveals these problems, covering issues including psychosurveillance on websites like Facebook and 7 Cups of Tea, shortcomings of popular AI “doctors on demand” like Woebot, Wysa, and Joy, and even how therapists are being conscripted into the gig economy.Featuring a vital coda that brings Therapy Tech up to date for the COVID era, this book is the first to give readers a large-scale analysis of mental health technologies and the cultural changes they have enabled. Both a sobering dissection of the current state of mental health and a necessary warning of where things are headed, Therapy Tech makes an important assertion about how to help those in need of mental health services today.Trade Review"Therapy Tech is a spirited, contrarian take on the idea that technology can solve or mitigate the U.S. mental health care crisis. Emma Bedor Hiland convincingly argues that smartphone wellness apps, telemedicine, and therapeutic chatbots will not cure the structural inequalities of the healthcare system; moreover, these mental health technologies carry insidious neoliberal baggage. A thought-provoking, critical exploration into the cultural life of modern mental health technologies."—Elizabeth J. Donaldson, author of Literatures of Madness: Disability Studies and Mental Health"Clear, concise, and accessible, Therapy Tech wades into the massive digital mental healthcare industry, providing readers with front-line reporting on the most recent episode in America’s long history of health-related consumerism. Emma Bedor Hiland shows that increased development of products and platforms—what she calls ‘technological solutionism’—does not improve access to mental healthcare for historically marginalized and under-resourced poor, rural, and racialized communities, and, if unchecked, will result in intensified forms of ‘psychosurveillance.’"—Michael Rembis, director, Center for Disability Studies, University at BuffaloTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Pursuing a Technological Fix1. Mental Wellness by Smartphone App2. Psychosurveillance3. Chatbots and Therapeutic AI4. Telemental Healthcare5. The Future of Mental Health TechnologiesCOVID CodaAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisAn event-by-event look at how institutionalized racism harms the health of African Americans in the twenty-first century A crucial component of anti-Black racism is the unconscionable disparity in health outcomes between Black and white Americans. Sickening examines this institutionalized inequality through dramatic, concrete events from the past two decades, revealing how unequal living conditions and inadequate medical care have become routine. From the spike in chronic disease after Hurricane Katrina to the lack of protection for Black residents during the Flint water crisis—and even the life-threatening childbirth experience for tennis star Serena Williams—author Anne Pollock takes readers on a journey through the diversity of anti-Black racism operating in healthcare. She goes beneath the surface to deconstruct the structures that make these events possible, including mass incarceration, police brutality, and the hypervisibility of Black athletes’ bodies. Ultimately, Sickening shows what these shocking events reveal about the everyday racialization of health in the United States.Concluding with a vital examination of racialized healthcare during the COVID pandemic and the Black Lives Matter rebellions of 2020, Sickening cuts through the mind-numbing statistics to vividly portray healthcare inequalities. In a gripping and passionate style, Pollock shows the devastating reality and consequences of systemic racism on the lives and health of Black Americans. Trade Review "Anne Pollock offers a model and method for situating everyday forms of anti-Blackness within a larger machinery of death-making that—whether it grinds people down slowly or extinguishes them swiftly—counts on our inability to connect the dots. Riveting, infuriating, and essential, Sickening reminds us that neither statistics nor structural analysis will save us, and all those committed to social change must heed the stories we tell (and are told) about racism and inequity if we are to get free."—Ruha Benjamin, author of Race After Technology "For all the ink that has been spilled on racial disparities in disease, there is frustratingly little attention to how racism works and why it both developed and persists. With Sickening, Anne Pollock meticulously illustrates several key theoretical and conceptual principles on race and racism, such as their durability, that have not yet been fully developed in the field of science and technology studies."—Lundy Braun, author of Breathing Race into the Machine: The Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics "A crucial guided analysis of anti-Blackness and its impact on Black people’s ability to live as fully entitled citizens, Pollock’s scholarship is essential medicine for a society in denial about its sickness."—Foreword "This book offers us the tools to think and act critically about workable solutions, as we recognize injustice and realize our part in dismantling systems of inequities. "—Colors of Influence "Sickening is a great book for opening minds, encouraging action, and inspiring advocacy for justice."—American Scientist "In a gripping and passionate style, Pollock shows the devastating reality and consequences of systemic racism on the lives and health of Black Americans. "—The Washington Informer "In Sickening, Pollock demonstrates the breadth of her expertise on racism and health, including drawing on major Black leaders in the field—a point she notes has been lacking in research."—Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law Table of ContentsContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Terrorism: The Deaths of Black Postal Workers in the 2001 Anthrax Attacks2. Un/natural Disaster: Chronic Disease after Hurricane Katrina3. Mass Incarceration: On the Suspended Sentences of the Scott Sisters4. Environmental Racism: Protecting GM’s Machines While Abandoning Flint’s People5. Police Brutality: Enforcing Segregation at a Pool Party6. Reproductive Injustice: Serena Williams’ Birth StoryConclusionNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisAn event-by-event look at how institutionalized racism harms the health of African Americans in the twenty-first century A crucial component of anti-Black racism is the unconscionable disparity in health outcomes between Black and white Americans. Sickening examines this institutionalized inequality through dramatic, concrete events from the past two decades, revealing how unequal living conditions and inadequate medical care have become routine. From the spike in chronic disease after Hurricane Katrina to the lack of protection for Black residents during the Flint water crisis—and even the life-threatening childbirth experience for tennis star Serena Williams—author Anne Pollock takes readers on a journey through the diversity of anti-Black racism operating in healthcare. She goes beneath the surface to deconstruct the structures that make these events possible, including mass incarceration, police brutality, and the hypervisibility of Black athletes’ bodies. Ultimately, Sickening shows what these shocking events reveal about the everyday racialization of health in the United States.Concluding with a vital examination of racialized healthcare during the COVID pandemic and the Black Lives Matter rebellions of 2020, Sickening cuts through the mind-numbing statistics to vividly portray healthcare inequalities. In a gripping and passionate style, Pollock shows the devastating reality and consequences of systemic racism on the lives and health of Black Americans. Trade Review "Anne Pollock offers a model and method for situating everyday forms of anti-Blackness within a larger machinery of death-making that—whether it grinds people down slowly or extinguishes them swiftly—counts on our inability to connect the dots. Riveting, infuriating, and essential, Sickening reminds us that neither statistics nor structural analysis will save us, and all those committed to social change must heed the stories we tell (and are told) about racism and inequity if we are to get free."—Ruha Benjamin, author of Race After Technology "For all the ink that has been spilled on racial disparities in disease, there is frustratingly little attention to how racism works and why it both developed and persists. With Sickening, Anne Pollock meticulously illustrates several key theoretical and conceptual principles on race and racism, such as their durability, that have not yet been fully developed in the field of science and technology studies."—Lundy Braun, author of Breathing Race into the Machine: The Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics "A crucial guided analysis of anti-Blackness and its impact on Black people’s ability to live as fully entitled citizens, Pollock’s scholarship is essential medicine for a society in denial about its sickness."—Foreword "This book offers us the tools to think and act critically about workable solutions, as we recognize injustice and realize our part in dismantling systems of inequities. "—Colors of Influence "Sickening is a great book for opening minds, encouraging action, and inspiring advocacy for justice."—American Scientist "In a gripping and passionate style, Pollock shows the devastating reality and consequences of systemic racism on the lives and health of Black Americans. "—The Washington Informer "In Sickening, Pollock demonstrates the breadth of her expertise on racism and health, including drawing on major Black leaders in the field—a point she notes has been lacking in research."—Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law Table of ContentsContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Terrorism: The Deaths of Black Postal Workers in the 2001 Anthrax Attacks2. Un/natural Disaster: Chronic Disease after Hurricane Katrina3. Mass Incarceration: On the Suspended Sentences of the Scott Sisters4. Environmental Racism: Protecting GM’s Machines While Abandoning Flint’s People5. Police Brutality: Enforcing Segregation at a Pool Party6. Reproductive Injustice: Serena Williams’ Birth StoryConclusionNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisExploring networked technologies and bioeconomy and their links to biotechnologies, pharmacology, and pharmaceuticals Being on social media, having pornography or an internet addiction, consciousness hacking, and mundane smartness initiatives are practices embodied in a similar manner to the swallowing of a pill. Such close relations of media technologies to pharmaceuticals and pharmacology is the focus of this book. Technopharmacology is a modest call to expand media theoretical inquiry by attending to the biological, neurological, and pharmacological dimensions of media and centers on emergent affinities between big data and big pharma. Trade Review"Technopharmacology overturns how we think about the relation between media technologies and pharmaceutical agents. The book offers compelling new perspectives on the ways in which the agency of media oscillates between toxin and intoxicant, while drug technologies generate new infrastructures of communication."—Thomas Lamarre, Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies and East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. "Technopharmacology hits a sore but absolutely crucial spot: the relation between the pharmaceutical industry and digital media, the pharmacologization of media and the mediatization of pharmacology. A must-read to find new means of orientation in the chaotic post-pandemic world which Big Pharma and Platform Capital increasingly dominate."—Tiziana Terranova, Professor of Cultural Studies and Digital Media, University of Naples "L'Orientale"

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Book SynopsisWinner, "Gold" Independent Publishing Award (IPPY) for LGBTQ+ Nonfiction Winner, The Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, 34th Annual Triangle Awards 2023 Lammy Finalist, Gay Memoir/Biography A coming-of-age memoir of life on the front lines of the AIDS crisis with ACT UP New York. From the moment Ron Goldberg stumbled into his first ACT UP meeting in June 1987, the AIDS activist organization became his life. For the next eight years, he chaired committees, planned protests, led teach-ins, and facilitated their Monday night meetings. He cruised and celebrated at ACT UP parties, attended far too many AIDS memorials, and participated in more than a hundred zaps and demonstrations, becoming the group’s unofficial “Chant Queen,” writing and leading chants for many of their major actions. Boy with the Bullhorn is both a memoir and an immersive history of the original New York chapter of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, from 1987 to 1995, told with great humor, heart, and insight. Using the author’s own story, “the activist education of a well-intentioned, if somewhat naïve nice gay Jewish theater queen,” Boy with the Bullhorn intertwines Goldberg’s experiences with the larger chronological history of ACT UP, the grassroots AIDS activist organization that confronted politicians, scientists, drug companies, religious leaders, the media, and an often uncaring public to successfully change the course of the AIDS epidemic. Diligently sourced and researched, Boy with the Bullhorn provides both an intimate look into how activist strategies are developed and deployed and a snapshot of life in New York City during the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic. On the occasions where Goldberg writes outside his personal experience, he relies on his extensive archive of original ACT UP documents, news articles, and other published material, as well as activist videos and oral histories, to help flesh out actions, events, and the background stories of key activists. Writing with great candor, Goldberg examines the group’s triumphs and failures, as well as the pressures and bad behaviors that eventually tore ACT UP apart. A story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, from engaging in outrageous, media-savvy demonstrations, to navigating the intricacies of drug research and the byzantine bureaucracies of the FDA, NIH, and CDC, Boy with the Bullhorn captures the passion, smarts, and evanescent spirit of ACT UP—the anger, grief, and desperation, but also the joy, camaraderie, and sexy, campy playfulness—and the exhilarating adrenaline rush of activism.Table of ContentsPreface | ix Part I: Becoming an Activist 1 Awakening | 3 2 First Steps | 22 3 Welcome to ACT UP | 38 4 We Are Family | 52 Part II: Expanding the Agenda 5 ACT NOW and the Nine Days of Rain | 67 6 Taking Actions | 83 7 Summer Awakening | 97 8 Seize Control of the FDA | 117 Part III: Crashing Through 9 Targeting City Hall | 141 10 Storming the Ivory Tower | 163 11 Remember Stonewall Was a Riot | 179 12 Parallel Tracks | 192 13 Heading Inside | 211 14 Stop the Church | 222 Part IV: The Gorgeous Mosaic 15 The Myers Mess | 235 16 Time’s Up, Mario! | 248 17 Storm the NIH | 256 18 Inside or Out | 266 19 Can the Center Hold? | 280 20 Bombs Are Dropping | 301 Part V: Days of Desperation 21 Desperate Measures | 317 22 Splitting Differences | 333 23 Target Bush | 351 24 Strategies and Consequences | 370 Part VI: AIDS Campaign ’92 25 ACT UP / Petrelis | 383 26 The In-Your-Face Primary | 394 27 Unconventional Behavior | 402 28 Vote as If Your Life Depended on It | 417 Afterword | 437 Acknowledgments | 443 Notes | 449 Index | 483 Photographs follow page 214

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