From SARS to Zika, and Ebola to COVID-19, epidemics and pandemics have become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Each outbreak presents new challenges but the responses are often similar.This important book explores the dimensions, dynamics and implications of emerging pandemic societies. Drawing on ideas from sociology and science and technology studies, it sheds new light on how pandemics are socially produced and, in turn, shape societies in areas such as governance, work a...

Digital media have become deeply immersed in our lives, heightening both hopes and fears of their affordances. While the internet, mobile phones, and social media offer their users many options, they also engender concerns about their manipulations and intrusions. Emotions Online explores the visions that shape responses to media and the emotional regimes that govern people’s engagements with them.This book critically examines evidence on the role of digital media in emoti...

We have two lives. The second begins when we realise we only have one.For Julius Tiberius Banks, a health crisis at thirty-two ends his first. In his second, he wants a better reason forbeing than the mountain of cash and the calculating trophy wife he'd gathered in the first.Progress is made, but less than two years later, his fleeting vision of that new life is stymied. Unknown people want him dead.Seeking safety and solutions, he returns home to Melbourne...

Recent rapid advances in the biosciences have led to considerable debate about the social, ethical, and legal implications of research and its applications. The mapping of the human genome, advances in cloning techniques, the harvesting of embryonic stem cells for research, increasing use of genetic testing in healthcare, and the development of large-scale genetic databases have not only generated high expectations about new diagnostics and treatments but also considerable widespread fear ...

This book provides a unique and innovative perspective on the controversial phenomenon of ‘stem cell tourism’. A growing number of patients are embarking on stem cell treatments that are clinically unproven and yet available in clinics and hospitals around the world. The authors offer a cutting-edge multi-dimensional perspective on this complex and rapidly changing phenomenon, including an analysis of the experiences of those who have undertaken or have contemplated undertaking a stem cell...

What is ‘digital health’? And, what are its implications for medicine and healthcare, and for individual citizens and society? ‘Digital health’ is of growing interest to policymakers, clinicians, and businesses. It is underpinned by promise and optimism, with predictions that digital technologies and related innovations will soon ‘transform’ medicine and healthcare, and enable individuals to better manage their own health and risk and to receive a more ‘personalised’ treatment and...

Aging Men, Masculinities and Modern Medicine explores the multiple socio-historical contexts surrounding men’s aging bodies in modern medicine from a global perspective. The first of its kind, it investigates the interrelated aspects of aging, masculinities and biomedicine, allowing for a timely reconsideration of the conceptualisation of aging men within the recent explosion of social science studies on men’s health and biotechnologies including anti-aging perspectives.Th...

Ethical and practical issues around genetic research are of major international concern, both in academia and in the public domain. Questions concerning what interventions are possible and appropriate with the increasing amount of genetic information available, challenge our understandings of ourselves, our health and wellbeing, and the role of medical ethics, public health, surveillance and risk. However there has been little reflection on the socio-political effects of this new genetic k...

Poststructuralism, Citizenship and Social Policy shows how poststructuralist ideas can be usefully applied in the areas of welfare, health, education and science and technology policy, making particular reference to the theme of citizenship.The impact of poststructuralism on thinking in the social sciences and humanities over the last decade has been profound. However, to date, there has been little systematic analysis of the implications of poststructuralism for the critic...

In our post-welfare society, health is increasingly viewed as a commodity and individuals are defined as 'health care consumers'. At the same time, the notion that the state should care for the health of its citizens is being replaced by an expectation that citizens should play a more active role in caring for themselves. These developments are by no means uncontentious.Consuming Health explores the diverse meanings and applications of the term 'consumer' in the field of he...

The rapid advancement of genetic science, fuelled by the Human Genome Project and other related initiatives, promises a new kind of public health practice based on the pre-detection of disease according to calculations of genetic risk. This book by two well-known sociologists:* explores the implications of the new genetics for public health as a body of knowledge and a domain of practice* assesses the impact of new genetic information and technologies on conceptions of health...

Why is there currently such strong academic and popular interest in ‘the body’ in contemporary societies? What factors shape our conceptions of the body, its naturalness, health and normality? What is the mind-body dualism and why should it matter?This book examines these and other body questions from a critical socio-cultural perspective. In particular, it shows how conceptions of the body are affected by processes of individualization, medicalization and commodification. Chapters...