Introducing Health Anthropology: A Discipline in Action

With a new title that reflects the broad scope and primary concerns of the field, Introducing Health Anthropology: A Discipline in Action, Fourth Edition, provides students with a first look at the dynamic discipline of medical and health anthropology. The narrative is guided by four unifying themes. First, health anthropologists are heavily involved in the process of helping to better understand and change the world through their work in applied projects, policy initiatives, and advocacy. Second, the book presents the fundamental importance of culture and social relationships in health and sickness by demonstrating that experienced illness and diagnosed disease involve complex biosocial processes and that resolving them requires attention to a range of factors beyond biology. Third, through an examination of health inequality, the book highlights the need for research and analyses that move beyond cultural or even ecological models of health toward comprehensive and holistic biosocial frameworks. Finally, the authors emphasize that physical and mental health are intimately related to the health of the environment on which humans depend for air, food, and the other resources that make life possible. Introducing Health Anthropology gives students the tools to rethink how to achieve healthier populations, effective and fully accessible healthcare systems, and a sustainable world. New to this Edition: · New Chapter 4, “Human Evolution and Health,” examines the respective roles of genetics and sociocultural factors in health to navigate the welter of public misinformation on genetic determinism, race, and sex and gender minorities · Significantly expanded discussion of reproductive health, sex and gender, and gender equity throughout the book reflects current and controversial issues in the U.S. · Up-to-date examination of the relationship of climate change to health and social wellbeing offers students insights on how our physical world is changing and the causes of those changes · Discussion of the global impact of COVID-19 throughout the text explores the enduring changes wrought by the pandemic on human societies

Table of Contents:
Preface Chapter 1: Introduction to the Anthropology of Health Introduction and Overview Encountering Health Anthropology Three Case Studies in Applied Health Anthropology Practical and Theoretical Contributions of Health Anthropology Defining Health Anthropology History of Health Anthropology Health Anthropology Theories Chapter 2: What Health Anthropologists Do and How They Do It Introduction and Overview Three Settings, Three Case Studies, Three Health Anthropologists A Case Study What Health Anthropologists Study Conducting Research: A Peculiarly Anthropological Approach Research Methods: The Anthropological Approach to Knowledge Generation Health Anthropology in Use The Health Anthropology Crystal Ball Chapter 3: Understanding Health, Illness, and Disease Introduction and Overview Conceptions of Health and Illness Sufferer Experience Illness Narratives Embodied Health Experience Healer versus Sufferer Conception of Disease Chapter 4: Human Evolution and Health Introduction and Overview The Roots of Evolutionary Health Linkages, Trade-Offs, and Thrifty Genes Migration and the Genetics of Health The Out-of-Africa Intrusion Living in the Clouds Epigenetics Socioeconomic Factors The Genetics of Sexuality Conclusion Chapter 5: Ethnomedicine: The Worlds of Treatment and Healing Introduction and Overview Approaching Ethnomedicine Indigenous and Folk Medicine Systems An Evolutionary Model of Disease Theories and Healing Systems Case Study: Are the Therapeutic Aspects of Religion Something That Partially Address Refugee Health Problems? Biomedicine as the Predominant Ethnomedicine in Modern Societies Chapter 6: Plural Medical Systems: Complexity, Complementarity, and Conflict Introduction and Overview A Case Study of Medical Pluralism in a Rural Area in a Developing Society: The Altiplano of Bolivia A Case Study of Medical Pluralism in an Urban Setting of a Developing Society: A View from Central Java A Case Study of Medical Pluralism in a Developed Society: The Australian Dominative Medical System Typologies of Plural Medical Systems New Directions in the Study of Medical Pluralism Chapter 7: Health Disparity, Health Inequality Introduction and Overview What Is Health Disparity? Health Disparity in the United States Gasping for Breath Causes of Health Disparity: Lifestyle versus Social Inequality Biology of Poverty Insuring Disease Culturally Competent Care Health and Social Disparities Cross-Culturally Addressing Health Disparities Pushing Back on Health Disparities “Race” and Health Disparity Chapter 8: Health and the Environment: Toward a Healthier World Introduction and Overview Medical Ecology and Critical Health Anthropology on the Environment Health and the Environment in the Past Health and the Environment Today The Political Ecology of Cancer The Impact of Private Motor Vehicles on Health The Impact of Airplanes on Health The Political Ecology of AIDS: Assessing a Contemporary Syndemic Chapter 9: The Biopolitics of Life: Biotechnology, Biocapital, and Bioethics Introduction and Overview Critical Health Anthropology and Biotechnology Science, Nature, and Culture Reproductive Technologies Divisible Bodies Bringing the Lab into the Field: Anthropology and the Neurosciences Molecular Biotechnologies: Tiny Pieces, Giant Infrastructures The Story of hGH-Growing up Growth Hormone The Culture of PCR Visualization Technologies When Technologies Combine Ancestry, Families, and Genetics: Biotechnology and Belonging Summary Chapter 10: Strategies and Visions for a Healthier World Introduction and Overview Global Capitalism Democratic Eco-Socialism as a Pathway for a Healthier World Democratic Eco-Socialism as a Pathway to Planetary Health How to Go from A to B Health Anthropology as an Action-Oriented Endeavor Source Material for Students Glossary References Index About the Authors

About the Author :
Merrill Singer is professor emeritus in the Departments of Anthropology and Community Medicine at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Singer has published 290 scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters, and has authored, co-authored or edited thirty-three books. His research and writing have addressed syndemics, HIV/AIDS and STDs in highly vulnerable and disadvantaged populations, illicit drug use and drinking behavior, infectious disease, community and structural violence, and the political ecology of health, including the health consequences of climate change. Dr. Singer has been awarded the Rudolph Virchow Professional Prize, the George Foster Memorial Award for Practicing Anthropology, both the AIDS and Anthropology Research Group's Distinguished Service Award and its Clark Taylor Professional Paper Prize, the Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America, and the Solon T. Kimball Award for Public and Applied Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association. Hans A. Baer is principal honorary research fellow in the School of Social Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Hans was a Fulbright Scholar in at Humboldt University in East Berlin in the German Democratic Republic in 1988-1989. He has taught at several US universities, including George Peabody College for Teachers, St. John's University, the University of Southern Mississippi, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the University of California - Berkeley, Arizona State University, and at two Australian universities, namely the Australian National University and the University of Melbourne. Hans has published twenty-seven books and some 240 book chapters and articles on a diversity of research topics, including Mormonism, African American religion, sociopolitical life in East Germany, critical health anthropology, medical pluralism in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, the critical anthropology of climate change, Australian climate politics, and the political economy of higher education. His most recent books are Democratic Eco-Socialism as a Real Utopia (2018), Climate Change and Capitalism in Australia: An Eco-Socialist Vision for the Future (2022), The Corporatization and Environmental Sustainability of Australian Universities: A Critical Perspective, and Building the Critical Anthropology of Climate Change: Towards a Socio-Ecological Revolution (with Merrill Singer). Debbi Long is an honorary senior lecturer in the Wollotuka Institute (Indigenous Studies) at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She is a critical health anthropologist and a pioneer of hospital ethnography in Australia. She has undertaken health ethnography in Turkey, Eswatini, and in a variety of public hospital contexts in Australia, including maternity, spinal, intensive care and dialysis units. She has worked as a consultant in clinical organization and management on projects including quality improvement, patient safety, behaviour change, and in industrial relations contexts. Other research includes family violence education and workplace injury compensation analysis. She has taught at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in anthropology departments, international development programs, medical, nursing and allied health programs and in Indigenous studies. including foundation and support programs. Debbi is a qualified Permaculture designer and educator, and recent projects involve a focus on food security, circular economies and sustainable building, heavily informed by traditional Indigenous knowledges. Alex Pavlotski works as a health anthropologist at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne. He specializes in using visual methods in research, co-design methodologies, ethnography, and anthropological teaching. Alex has worked in teaching and research with LaTrobe University, the University of Auckland, the University of Melbourne, and Monash University.

Review :
“Singer, Baer, Long, and Pavlotski converse with enduring and current concerns, themes, and even labels in the context of novel disciplinary paradigms in this richly detailed and nuanced updated edition, presented with case studies accessible to contemporary scholars and students.” “A foundational text for understanding how cultural dimensions of human suffering and healing relate to local and global social inequalities. The case studies foster critical reflection of plural medical systems, offering insight into how access to vital resources shape human responses to the world's most pressing health conditions.” “Merrill Singer and colleagues' timely text is a thoughtful, detailed consideration of historical and current theoretical and methodological practices in health anthropology. The authors draw on their decades of experience to critically inspect the complexities of different medical systems, particularly from a health inequity, biopolitical, and political ecology lens.” “A classic orientation to an applied field, this book puts the historical praxis of understanding society and health at the center.”