This book explains the growing field of syndemic theory and research, a framework for the analysis and prevention of disease interactions that addresses underlying social and environmental causes. This perspective complements single-issue prevention strategies, which can be effective for discrete problems, but often are mismatched to the goal of protecting the public's health in its widest sense."Merrill Singer has astutely described why health problems should not be seen in isolat...

This book synthesizes the flourishing field of anthropology of infectious disease in a critical, biocultural framework. Leading medical anthropologist Merrill Singer holistically unites the behaviors of microorganisms and the activities of complex social systems, showing how we exist with pathogenic agents of disease in a complex process of co-evolution. He also connects human diseases to larger ecosystems and various other species that are future sources of new human infections. Anthropol...

Features a collection of seven research-based articles on AIDS. This work seeks to cut through popular misunderstanding and conventional ideas about the spread and impact of AIDS by employing a political economic perspective in the analysis of the epidemic in diverse settings.

The year 2016 was the hottest year on record and the third consecutive record-breaking year in planet temperatures. The following year was the hottest in a non-El Nino year. Of the seventeen hottest years ever recorded, sixteen have occurred since 2000, indicating the trend in climate change is toward an ever warmer Earth. However, climate change does not occur in a social vacuum; it reflects relations between social groups and forces us to contemplate the ways in which we think about and ...

This text introduces undergraduate and graduate students in health or environment-related classes to the mounting crisis of syndemics through the lens of planetary health. The concept of syndemics, developed by the author and now in wide use across multiple health-related disciplines, focuses attention on the adverse synergistic interaction of two or more diseases or other health conditions promoted or facilitated by social and/or environmental conditions. The planetary health framework is...

Learn the public health implications of shifting drug-related risks among the inner city poorInner city drug use behavior shifts and changes, leaving past drug treatment programs, drug prevention efforts, health care provisions for drug users, and social service practice unprepared to effectively respond. New Drugs on the Street: Changing Inner City Patterns of Illicit Consumption tackles this problem by presenting the latest ethnographic and epidemiological studies of emerging and...

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 a...

Now in an updated second edition, African American Religion remains an invaluable overview of the great diversity of religious groups within the modern African American community. This plethora of forms reflects a tension that has characterized African American religion since its beginnings—a tension between accommodation to and protest against white society’s domination.Viewing African American sectarianism as a response to racism and social stratification in the larger society, t...

The purpose of this book is to provide an introduction and overview to the critical perspective as it has evolved in medical anthropology over the last ten years. Standing as an opposition approach to conventional medical anthropology, critical medical anthropology has emphasized the importance of political and economy forces, including the exercise of power, in shaping health, disease, illness experience, and health care.

Drug users are typically portrayed as worthless slackers, burdens on society, and just plain useless—culturally, morally, and economically. By contrast, this book argues that the social construction of some people as useless is in fact extremely useful to other people. Leading medical anthropologists Merrill Singer and J. Bryan Page analyze media representations, drug policy, and underlying social structures to show what industries and social sectors benefit from the criminalization, demon...

How do we understand and respond to the pressing health problems of modern society? Conventional practice focuses on the assessment and clinical treatment of immediate health issues presented by individual patients. In contrast, social medicine advocates an equal focus on the assessment and social treatment of underlying social conditions, such as environmental factors, structural violence, and social injustice.Social Justice and Medical Practice examines the practice of social med...

The chapters in Foundations of Biosocial Health: Stigma and Illness Interactions, drawn primarily from medical anthropology, highlight the diverse ways in which various stigmatized health conditions interact with social inequalities and stigma to form syndemics. The authors delineate multiple examples of stigma-driven syndemics to demonstrate both the nature of disease interactions and how stigma contributes to, promotes, exacerbates, or perpetuates a syndemic. In so doing, the authors als...