Tessa M. Pollard – författare

It is widely recognised that men and women in societies all over the world have very different experiences of sickness and health. This collection brings together biological and social anthropologists whose work illustrates how these sub-disciplines have approached the task of explaining such differences. We demonstrate that an understanding of science and culture, using the notions of biological 'sex' and socio-culturally constructed 'gender' are both essential for furthering analyses of men's and women's, boys' and girls' experiences of health and disease. We address the important topics of gender differences in parental care, cardiovascular disease, reproductive health and psychological illness, and look at how the medicalisation of women and their relative absence from models of population health might affect their experiences of preventative health measures. This book will be particularly useful for students on human sciences or anthropology courses, or anyone wishing to gain an interdisciplinary perspective on the subject.

It is widely recognised that men and women in societies all over the world have very different experiences of sickness and health. This collection brings together biological and social anthropologists whose work illustrates how these sub-disciplines have approached the task of explaining such differences. We demonstrate that an understanding of science and culture, using the notions of biological 'sex' and socio-culturally constructed 'gender' are both essential for furthering analyses of men's and women's, boys' and girls' experiences of health and disease. We address the important topics of gender differences in parental care, cardiovascular disease, reproductive health and psychological illness, and look at how the medicalisation of women and their relative absence from models of population health might affect their experiences of preventative health measures. This book will be particularly useful for students on human sciences or anthropology courses, or anyone wishing to gain an interdisciplinary perspective on the subject.

As a group, western diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, allergies and mental health problems constitute one of the major problems facing humans at the beginning of the 21st century, particularly as they extend into poorer countries. An evolutionary perspective has much to offer standard biomedical understandings of western diseases. At the heart of this approach is the notion that human evolution occurred in circumstances very different from the modern affluent western environment and that, as a consequence, human biology is not adapted to the contemporary western environment. Written with an anthropological perspective and aimed at advanced undergraduates and graduates taking courses in the ecology and evolution of disease, Tessa Pollard applies and extends this evolutionary perspective by analysing trends in rates of western diseases and providing a new synthesis of current understandings of evolutionary processes, and of the biology and epidemiology of disease.