Description
Book SynopsisChallenging the accepted methodologies of epidemiology and international health, this book points out that most explanatory strategies, from 'cost-effectiveness' to patient 'noncompliance,' inevitably lead to blaming the victims.
Trade Review"The only things that distinguish Farmer's account from a Dostoevskian novel is a meed of hard, effective science and a depressingly familiar story of the powerfully malignant of racism.... It is hard to think of more compelling examples to underpin his arguments. It makes the book and its message accessible to the general reader and forcefully reminds doctors, nurses, scientists, sociologists, economists and aid workers of their unfinished business.... But the main lessons he draws are for us all. We must do all we can to diminish social inequality." - Hugh Pennington, Times Higher Education Supplement "A strangely uplifting read. Infections and Inequalities is a powerful and rigorously argued critique of economic and health care inequality." - Phil Whitaker, The Guardian (UK) "Bolstered by thorough knowledge of the countries in which he practiced, relevant and cogent case histories, and a caring but disciplined attitude, Farmer powerfully argues for substantial changes in epidemiological theory and practice. He raises thought-provoking and necessary questions, and he provides answers that, if often unsettling, are pertinent and capable of being put to use by individuals and governments truly interested in solving, not sidestepping, life-threatening situations." - William Beatty, Booklist"
Table of ContentsPreface to the Paperback Edition
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Vitality of Practice: On Personal Trajectories
2. Rethinking "Emerging Infectious Diseases"
3. Invisible Women: Class, Gender, and HIV
4. The Exotic and the Mundane:
Human Immunodeficiency Vrrus in the Caribbean
5. Culture, Poverty, and ffiV Transmission:
The Case of Rural Haiti
Miracles and Misery: An Ethnographic Interlude
6. Sending Sickness:
Sorcery, Politics, and Changing Concepts
of AIDS in Rural Haiti
7. The Consumption of the Poor:
Tuberculosis .in the Late Twentieth Century
8. Optimism and Pessimism in Tuberculosis Control:
Lessons from Rural Haiti
9. Immodest Claims of Causality:
Social Scientists and the "New" Tuberculosis
10. The Persistent Plagues:
Biological Expressions of Social Inequalities
Notes
References
Index
