Critical Approaches to Health - Böcker

Complementary and Alternative Medicine is a sociological investigation of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in contemporary society, and an exploration of the forces throughout the globe, across different institutions, and within different therapeutic spaces, that constrain or foster alternative medicine.Drawing on 30 years of research, the book identifies the trends in the use of CAM and explores the scientific, political and social challenges that CAM faces in relation to orthodox medicine. The author examines the varieties of CAM practices and how they manifest in different institutional spaces – including public inquiries, the orthodox medical practitioner’s consulting room, medical journals and the homes of those who use CAM. It also compares unorthodox practices in different geo-political settings, namely the global north and the global south.This book is valuable reading for higher-level undergraduate and postgraduate social science students, including those in psychology, sociology, anthropology, health sciences and related disciplines. It is relevant for courses in medical sociology, medical anthropology and social science and health, and a broader audience interested in contemporary health issues, controversies and alternative medicine.

Complementary and Alternative Medicine is a sociological investigation of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in contemporary society, and an exploration of the forces throughout the globe, across different institutions, and within different therapeutic spaces, that constrain or foster alternative medicine.Drawing on 30 years of research, the book identifies the trends in the use of CAM and explores the scientific, political and social challenges that CAM faces in relation to orthodox medicine. The author examines the varieties of CAM practices and how they manifest in different institutional spaces – including public inquiries, the orthodox medical practitioner’s consulting room, medical journals and the homes of those who use CAM. It also compares unorthodox practices in different geo-political settings, namely the global north and the global south.This book is valuable reading for higher-level undergraduate and postgraduate social science students, including those in psychology, sociology, anthropology, health sciences and related disciplines. It is relevant for courses in medical sociology, medical anthropology and social science and health, and a broader audience interested in contemporary health issues, controversies and alternative medicine.

Making Mental Health: A Critical History historicises mental health by examining the concept from the ‘madness’ of the late nineteenth century to the changing ideas about its contemporary concerns and status. It argues that a critical approach to the history of psychiatry and mental health shows them to constitute a dual clinical-political project that gathered pace over the course of the twentieth century and continues to resonate in the present. Drawing on scholarship across several areas of historical inquiry as well as historical and contemporary clinical literature, the book uses a thematic approach to highlight decisive moments that demonstrate the stakes of this engagement in Anglo-American contexts.By tracing the (unfinished) history of institutions, the search for cures for psychiatric distress, the growing interest of the nation-state in mental health, the history of attempts to globalise psychiatry, the controversies over the politics of diagnostic categories that erupted in the 1960s and 1970s, and the history of theorising about the relationship between the psyche and the market, the book offers a comprehensive account of the evolution of mental health into a commonplace concern.Addressing key questions in the fields of history, medical humanities, and the social sciences, as well as in the psychiatry disciplines themselves, the book is an essential contribution to an ongoing conversation about mental distress and its meanings.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Making Mental Health: A Critical History historicises mental health by examining the concept from the ‘madness’ of the late nineteenth century to the changing ideas about its contemporary concerns and status. It argues that a critical approach to the history of psychiatry and mental health shows them to constitute a dual clinical-political project that gathered pace over the course of the twentieth century and continues to resonate in the present. Drawing on scholarship across several areas of historical inquiry as well as historical and contemporary clinical literature, the book uses a thematic approach to highlight decisive moments that demonstrate the stakes of this engagement in Anglo-American contexts.By tracing the (unfinished) history of institutions, the search for cures for psychiatric distress, the growing interest of the nation-state in mental health, the history of attempts to globalise psychiatry, the controversies over the politics of diagnostic categories that erupted in the 1960s and 1970s, and the history of theorising about the relationship between the psyche and the market, the book offers a comprehensive account of the evolution of mental health into a commonplace concern.Addressing key questions in the fields of history, medical humanities, and the social sciences, as well as in the psychiatry disciplines themselves, the book is an essential contribution to an ongoing conversation about mental distress and its meanings.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

By taking an ethnographic approach to medical travel, this important book uses critical perspectives to understand inequalities in healthcare access and delivery, including gender, class and ethnicity, and explore how these are negotiated. In this key text Vindrola- Padros presents a comprehensive overview of the work carried out on this topic to date, highlights the gaps that remain and suggests strategies for enriching medical travel research in the future.Drawing from the author’s research on internal medical travel to access pediatric oncology treatment in Buenos Aires, Argentina and other research from across the globe, this book presents four dimensions of medical travel that can be explored through a critical (im)mobilities lens: infrastructures, differential mobility empowerments, culture and affective dimensions of care and travel. Vindrola-Padros encourages the reader to critically explore processes of medical travel by considering the structures that shape travel, individual capacities for travel, the role emotions play in decisions and experiences of movement and service delivery and the ways in which culture(s) influence both travel and care.This book will be important reading for scholars across medical sociology, anthropology and critical health studies.

What if philosophy could solve the psychological puzzle of trauma? Embodied Trauma and Healing argues just that, suggesting that one might be needed in order to understand the other. The book demonstrates how the body-mind problem that haunted Descartes was addressed by phenomenologists, whilst also proposing that the human experience is lived subjectively as embodied consciousness. Throughout this book, the author suggests that the phenomenological tools that are used to explore the body can also be an effective way to discuss the physical and mental aspects of embodied trauma. Drawing on the work of Paul Ricœur, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Lévinas, the book outlines a phenomenological approach to the embodied and relational subject. It offers a reading of embodied trauma that can connect it to wider conversations in psychological underpinnings of trauma through Peter Levine’s somatic research and Bessel van der Kolk’s embodied remembering. Connecting to the analytic tradition, the book suggests that phenomenology can unify both language-based and body-based therapeutic practice. It also presents a compelling discussion that ties the embodied experience of relation in trauma to the wider causal factors of social suffering and relational rupture, intergenerational trauma and the trauma of land, as informed by phenomenology.Embodied Trauma and Healing is essential reading for researchers within the fields of philosophy, psychology and medical humanities for it actively engages with contemporary configurations of trauma theory and recent research developments in healing and mental disorder diagnosis.

What if philosophy could solve the psychological puzzle of trauma? Embodied Trauma and Healing argues just that, suggesting that one might be needed in order to understand the other. The book demonstrates how the body-mind problem that haunted Descartes was addressed by phenomenologists, whilst also proposing that the human experience is lived subjectively as embodied consciousness. Throughout this book, the author suggests that the phenomenological tools that are used to explore the body can also be an effective way to discuss the physical and mental aspects of embodied trauma. Drawing on the work of Paul Ricœur, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Lévinas, the book outlines a phenomenological approach to the embodied and relational subject. It offers a reading of embodied trauma that can connect it to wider conversations in psychological underpinnings of trauma through Peter Levine’s somatic research and Bessel van der Kolk’s embodied remembering. Connecting to the analytic tradition, the book suggests that phenomenology can unify both language-based and body-based therapeutic practice. It also presents a compelling discussion that ties the embodied experience of relation in trauma to the wider causal factors of social suffering and relational rupture, intergenerational trauma and the trauma of land, as informed by phenomenology.Embodied Trauma and Healing is essential reading for researchers within the fields of philosophy, psychology and medical humanities for it actively engages with contemporary configurations of trauma theory and recent research developments in healing and mental disorder diagnosis.

Selling Immunity Self, Culture and Economy in Healthcare and Medicine provides a groundbreaking study of the ways in which immunity shapes life. Through its up-to-date discussion of immunity cultures, alongside detailed real-world examples, the book demonstrates how immunity is enmeshed in concepts of possessive individualism, self-defence and health consumerism. The book explores the rich metaphorical powers of immunity and the life narratives it inspires with reference to the talk of scientists, immunology texts and popular science magazines. The author provides a detailed overview of the ways in which digital media can shape the immune self with reference to cultural and social theories, providing insight into how immunitary knowledge and products are consumed and the benefits and drawbacks this has for healthcare. The book considers the significance of immunity for individuals navigating the threats to health that arise with pandemics and superbugs, with a keen look into how these ideas surface in everyday life across the globe. Finally, the book also discusses economic bases of healthcare technologies bent towards the protection and restoration of immunity. This book is essential reading for professionals within the fields of psychology, sociology, biomedical science, healthcare and other related disciplines. A broader audience will appreciate the book’s attention on the ways immunity is understood to be a personal possession, an object of life craft, and the basis for healthcare consumerism.

Selling Immunity Self, Culture and Economy in Healthcare and Medicine provides a groundbreaking study of the ways in which immunity shapes life. Through its up-to-date discussion of immunity cultures, alongside detailed real-world examples, the book demonstrates how immunity is enmeshed in concepts of possessive individualism, self-defence and health consumerism. The book explores the rich metaphorical powers of immunity and the life narratives it inspires with reference to the talk of scientists, immunology texts and popular science magazines. The author provides a detailed overview of the ways in which digital media can shape the immune self with reference to cultural and social theories, providing insight into how immunitary knowledge and products are consumed and the benefits and drawbacks this has for healthcare. The book considers the significance of immunity for individuals navigating the threats to health that arise with pandemics and superbugs, with a keen look into how these ideas surface in everyday life across the globe. Finally, the book also discusses economic bases of healthcare technologies bent towards the protection and restoration of immunity. This book is essential reading for professionals within the fields of psychology, sociology, biomedical science, healthcare and other related disciplines. A broader audience will appreciate the book’s attention on the ways immunity is understood to be a personal possession, an object of life craft, and the basis for healthcare consumerism.

Engaging with some of the most debated topics in contemporary organizations, Health at Work: Critical Perspectives presents a critical, contingent view of the healthy employee and the very notion of organizational health. Drawing on expressions such as ‘blowing a fuse’, ‘cracking under pressure’ or ‘health MOT’, this book suggests that meanings of workplace health vary depending on how we frame the underlying purpose and function of organization. Health at Work takes some of the most powerful and taken-for-granted discourses of organization and explores what each might mean for the construction of the healthy employee. Not only does it offer a fresh and challenging approach to the topic of health at work, it also examines several core topics at the heart of contemporary research and practice, including technology, innovation, ageing and emotions. This book makes a timely contribution to debates about well-being at work, relevant to practitioners, policy-makers and designers of workplace health interventions, as well as academics and students. This book will be illuminating reading for students and scholars across management studies, occupational health and organizational psychology.

Engaging with some of the most debated topics in contemporary organizations, Health at Work: Critical Perspectives presents a critical, contingent view of the healthy employee and the very notion of organizational health. Drawing on expressions such as ‘blowing a fuse’, ‘cracking under pressure’ or ‘health MOT’, this book suggests that meanings of workplace health vary depending on how we frame the underlying purpose and function of organization. Health at Work takes some of the most powerful and taken-for-granted discourses of organization and explores what each might mean for the construction of the healthy employee. Not only does it offer a fresh and challenging approach to the topic of health at work, it also examines several core topics at the heart of contemporary research and practice, including technology, innovation, ageing and emotions. This book makes a timely contribution to debates about well-being at work, relevant to practitioners, policy-makers and designers of workplace health interventions, as well as academics and students. This book will be illuminating reading for students and scholars across management studies, occupational health and organizational psychology.

By taking an ethnographic approach to medical travel, this important book uses critical perspectives to understand inequalities in healthcare access and delivery, including gender, class and ethnicity, and explore how these are negotiated. In this key text Vindrola- Padros presents a comprehensive overview of the work carried out on this topic to date, highlights the gaps that remain and suggests strategies for enriching medical travel research in the future.Drawing from the author’s research on internal medical travel to access pediatric oncology treatment in Buenos Aires, Argentina and other research from across the globe, this book presents four dimensions of medical travel that can be explored through a critical (im)mobilities lens: infrastructures, differential mobility empowerments, culture and affective dimensions of care and travel. Vindrola-Padros encourages the reader to critically explore processes of medical travel by considering the structures that shape travel, individual capacities for travel, the role emotions play in decisions and experiences of movement and service delivery and the ways in which culture(s) influence both travel and care.This book will be important reading for scholars across medical sociology, anthropology and critical health studies.

This book sets out a critical sociological approach to ‘personalised medicine’ (PM), highlighting its limitations and flaws, but also emphasising its hopeful potentialities for a better medicine in the future.Bringing together perspectives from science and technology studies, medical sociology, law and bioethics, the book traces personalised medicine from its historical roots in disease classification and genomics to its data-driven present of digital infrastructures, algorithmic prediction, and precision therapeutics. Across seven chapters, it explores how measurement, classification, and datafication shape medical knowledge; how infrastructures and platforms distribute benefits and risks; how publics are imagined as patients, consumers, and citizens; and how privacy, access, and equity are negotiated in global health systems. The book concludes by outlining possible futures grounded in solidarity, patient-centered care, and democratic innovation—offering practical ways to shift personalised medicine from a privilege for the few to a shared public good.Written for scholars and practitioners in science and technology studies, sociology of medicine, health policy, and bioethics, as well as for clinicians and policymakers, this book will engage readers seeking to understand—and reshape—the social futures of data-intensive healthcare. It will also be useful for policy makers debating the implementation of different personalised medicine projects in local or national healthcare systems.

This book sets out a critical sociological approach to ‘personalised medicine’ (PM), highlighting its limitations and flaws, but also emphasising its hopeful potentialities for a better medicine in the future.Bringing together perspectives from science and technology studies, medical sociology, law and bioethics, the book traces personalised medicine from its historical roots in disease classification and genomics to its data-driven present of digital infrastructures, algorithmic prediction, and precision therapeutics. Across seven chapters, it explores how measurement, classification, and datafication shape medical knowledge; how infrastructures and platforms distribute benefits and risks; how publics are imagined as patients, consumers, and citizens; and how privacy, access, and equity are negotiated in global health systems. The book concludes by outlining possible futures grounded in solidarity, patient-centered care, and democratic innovation—offering practical ways to shift personalised medicine from a privilege for the few to a shared public good.Written for scholars and practitioners in science and technology studies, sociology of medicine, health policy, and bioethics, as well as for clinicians and policymakers, this book will engage readers seeking to understand—and reshape—the social futures of data-intensive healthcare. It will also be useful for policy makers debating the implementation of different personalised medicine projects in local or national healthcare systems.

This book is the first of its kind to examine key topics in death, dying, and bereavement through a critical lens, highlighting how the understanding and experience of death can vary considerably, based on social, cultural, historical, political, and medical contexts. It looks at the complex ways in which death and dying are managed, from the political level down to end- of- life care, and the inequalities that surround and impact experiences of death, dying, and bereavement.Readers are introduced to key theories, such as the medicalisation of dying, as well as contemporary issues, such as social movements, pandemics, and assisted dying. The book stresses how death is not only a biological process or event but rather shaped by a range of intersecting factors. Issues of inequalities in health, inequities in support, and intersectional analyses are brought to the fore, and each chapter is dedicated to an issue that has interdisciplinary resonance, thus showcasing the wider sociocultural and political factors that impact this time of life.This book is valuable reading for scholars in thanatology and death studies, and for those in related fields such as sociology of health, medical and social anthropology, and interdisciplinary social science courses.

This book is the first of its kind to examine key topics in death, dying, and bereavement through a critical lens, highlighting how the understanding and experience of death can vary considerably, based on social, cultural, historical, political, and medical contexts. It looks at the complex ways in which death and dying are managed, from the political level down to end- of- life care, and the inequalities that surround and impact experiences of death, dying, and bereavement.Readers are introduced to key theories, such as the medicalisation of dying, as well as contemporary issues, such as social movements, pandemics, and assisted dying. The book stresses how death is not only a biological process or event but rather shaped by a range of intersecting factors. Issues of inequalities in health, inequities in support, and intersectional analyses are brought to the fore, and each chapter is dedicated to an issue that has interdisciplinary resonance, thus showcasing the wider sociocultural and political factors that impact this time of life.This book is valuable reading for scholars in thanatology and death studies, and for those in related fields such as sociology of health, medical and social anthropology, and interdisciplinary social science courses.

This ground-breaking book sets out a fresh vision for a future medical education by providing a radical reconceptualisation of the purposes of medical humanities through a lens of critical health psychology and liberatory pedagogy. The medical humanities are conceived as translational media through which reductive, instrumental biomedicine can be raised in quality, intensity, and complexity by embracing ethical, aesthetic, political, and transcendental values. This translation occurs through innovative use of metaphor. A note of caution is offered – that the medical humanities too can be instrumental and reductive if not framed well.Drawing on major theorists such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Rancière and bringing together insights from diverse but inter-related fields, Bleakley focuses on the "ills" of contemporary biomedicine and medical education, and the need for reconceptualisation, which – it is argued – the translational medical humanities have the potential to accomplish. Current instrumental approaches to medical humanities, embracing communication skills training and narrative-based medicine, have failed to address the chronic symptoms suffered by medicine. These include resort to closed, functional systems thinking rather than embracing dynamic, complex, open, and adaptive systems thinking; lack of democratic habits in medical culture, compromising patient safety and care; the production of insensibility rather than deepening of sensibility in medical education; a lack of attention to ethics, aesthetics, and politics where the instrumental is privileged; and a lack of critical reflexivity in revisioning habitual practices. Through persuasive argument, Bleakley sets out a more radical manifesto for the role the arts and humanities might play in medical/healthcare education and offers a new approach based on curriculum process rather than syllabus content, to recuperate aesthetic sensibilities, discernment, and affect in medicine.The book will appeal to medical and healthcare educators, medical and health humanities scholars, engaged clinicians, social scientists drawing on critical theory, and arts and humanities practitioners engaging with medical and healthcare themes.

This ground-breaking book sets out a fresh vision for a future medical education by providing a radical reconceptualisation of the purposes of medical humanities through a lens of critical health psychology and liberatory pedagogy. The medical humanities are conceived as translational media through which reductive, instrumental biomedicine can be raised in quality, intensity, and complexity by embracing ethical, aesthetic, political, and transcendental values. This translation occurs through innovative use of metaphor. A note of caution is offered – that the medical humanities too can be instrumental and reductive if not framed well.Drawing on major theorists such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Rancière and bringing together insights from diverse but inter-related fields, Bleakley focuses on the "ills" of contemporary biomedicine and medical education, and the need for reconceptualisation, which – it is argued – the translational medical humanities have the potential to accomplish. Current instrumental approaches to medical humanities, embracing communication skills training and narrative-based medicine, have failed to address the chronic symptoms suffered by medicine. These include resort to closed, functional systems thinking rather than embracing dynamic, complex, open, and adaptive systems thinking; lack of democratic habits in medical culture, compromising patient safety and care; the production of insensibility rather than deepening of sensibility in medical education; a lack of attention to ethics, aesthetics, and politics where the instrumental is privileged; and a lack of critical reflexivity in revisioning habitual practices. Through persuasive argument, Bleakley sets out a more radical manifesto for the role the arts and humanities might play in medical/healthcare education and offers a new approach based on curriculum process rather than syllabus content, to recuperate aesthetic sensibilities, discernment, and affect in medicine.The book will appeal to medical and healthcare educators, medical and health humanities scholars, engaged clinicians, social scientists drawing on critical theory, and arts and humanities practitioners engaging with medical and healthcare themes.

This empirically grounded book presents a critical, interdisciplinary perspective on social and cultural issues related to the health and wellbeing of people with learning disabilities. Through an exploration of healthcare, love and intimacy, pregnancy and childbirth, housing, employment and food the book highlights the enduringly impoverished lives and premature deaths people labelled with learning disabilities experience globally and suggests that such structural violence amounts to social murder.Through the lens of critical disability studies, the book links the debates around learning disabilities to the larger framework of deinstitutionalisation. It takes a closer look at the label “learning disability”, which remains associated with stigma and shame, and advances comprehension of how and why it is that the lives of this group of people are systematically constrained and shortened. The book further identifies recommendations that can be utilised for challenging and changing these circumstances.It is essential reading for those involved in social and cultural issues related to the lives of people with learning disabilities, and also beneficial for advanced students in sociology, anthropology, psychology, allied health sciences and other related disciplines. It will also be valuable for researchers and health and social care professionals seeking critical insights about their work.

This empirically grounded book presents a critical, interdisciplinary perspective on social and cultural issues related to the health and wellbeing of people with learning disabilities. Through an exploration of healthcare, love and intimacy, pregnancy and childbirth, housing, employment and food the book highlights the enduringly impoverished lives and premature deaths people labelled with learning disabilities experience globally and suggests that such structural violence amounts to social murder.Through the lens of critical disability studies, the book links the debates around learning disabilities to the larger framework of deinstitutionalisation. It takes a closer look at the label “learning disability”, which remains associated with stigma and shame, and advances comprehension of how and why it is that the lives of this group of people are systematically constrained and shortened. The book further identifies recommendations that can be utilised for challenging and changing these circumstances.It is essential reading for those involved in social and cultural issues related to the lives of people with learning disabilities, and also beneficial for advanced students in sociology, anthropology, psychology, allied health sciences and other related disciplines. It will also be valuable for researchers and health and social care professionals seeking critical insights about their work.

Health Anxiety and the Quest for Safety critically examines how psychological and sociocultural processes influence anxiety and safety-seeking behaviour concerning perceived health risks in globalised information societies. It provides insights into how people respond to uncertainty and perceived threats to their body and health in the 'age of anxiety'.In examining the history of health anxiety, the author explores fluctuations in concepts, highlighting the power dynamics, uncertainties, and biased social and scientific attitudes in the background. The chapters offer a critical analysis of contemporary safety-seeking strategies, including online health information searches, fad diets, self-tracking, body image interventions, and the pursuit of personal meaning and well-being. Additionally, the book investigates how sociocultural influences can induce guilt about one’s body and health, promote self-blame, or foster stigmatising attitudes, while emphasising how the emergence of 'psy-culture', pop psychology, and digital tools may enhance health empowerment but also generate health-related anxieties and deepen inequalities. As a critical reflection on prevailing individualistic paradigms, the work also considers concepts that emphasise resonance and connectedness.This book is valuable reading for clinical and health psychologists, critical social scientists, researchers, and students in the health sciences, as well as practitioners in all healthcare settings, psychotherapists, and communication specialists.

Health Anxiety and the Quest for Safety critically examines how psychological and sociocultural processes influence anxiety and safety-seeking behaviour concerning perceived health risks in globalised information societies. It provides insights into how people respond to uncertainty and perceived threats to their body and health in the 'age of anxiety'.In examining the history of health anxiety, the author explores fluctuations in concepts, highlighting the power dynamics, uncertainties, and biased social and scientific attitudes in the background. The chapters offer a critical analysis of contemporary safety-seeking strategies, including online health information searches, fad diets, self-tracking, body image interventions, and the pursuit of personal meaning and well-being. Additionally, the book investigates how sociocultural influences can induce guilt about one’s body and health, promote self-blame, or foster stigmatising attitudes, while emphasising how the emergence of 'psy-culture', pop psychology, and digital tools may enhance health empowerment but also generate health-related anxieties and deepen inequalities. As a critical reflection on prevailing individualistic paradigms, the work also considers concepts that emphasise resonance and connectedness.This book is valuable reading for clinical and health psychologists, critical social scientists, researchers, and students in the health sciences, as well as practitioners in all healthcare settings, psychotherapists, and communication specialists.

The rise of digital health technologies is, for some, a panacea to many of the medical and public health challenges we face today. This is the first book to articulate a critical response to the techno-utopian and entrepreneurial vision of the digital health phenomenon. Deborah Lupton, internationally renowned for her scholarship on the sociocultural and political aspects of medicine and health as well as digital technologies, addresses a range of compelling issues about the interests digital health represents, and its unintended effects on patients, doctors and how we conceive of public health and healthcare delivery.Bringing together social and cultural theory with empirical research, the book challenges apolitical approaches to examine the impact new technologies have on social justice, and the implication for social and economic inequalities. Lupton considers how self-tracking devices change the patient-doctor relationship, and how the digitisation and gamification of healthcare through apps and other software affects the way we perceive and respond to our bodies. She asks which commercial interests enable different groups to communicate more widely, and how the personal data generated from digital encounters are exploited. Considering the lived experience of digital health technologies, including their emotional and sensory dimensions, the book also assesses their broader impact on medical and public health knowledges, power relations and work practices.Relevant to students and researchers interested in medicine and public health across sociology, psychology, anthropology, new media and cultural studies, as well as policy makers and professionals in the field, this is a timely contribution on an important issue.

The rise of digital health technologies is, for some, a panacea to many of the medical and public health challenges we face today. This is the first book to articulate a critical response to the techno-utopian and entrepreneurial vision of the digital health phenomenon. Deborah Lupton, internationally renowned for her scholarship on the sociocultural and political aspects of medicine and health as well as digital technologies, addresses a range of compelling issues about the interests digital health represents, and its unintended effects on patients, doctors and how we conceive of public health and healthcare delivery.Bringing together social and cultural theory with empirical research, the book challenges apolitical approaches to examine the impact new technologies have on social justice, and the implication for social and economic inequalities. Lupton considers how self-tracking devices change the patient-doctor relationship, and how the digitisation and gamification of healthcare through apps and other software affects the way we perceive and respond to our bodies. She asks which commercial interests enable different groups to communicate more widely, and how the personal data generated from digital encounters are exploited. Considering the lived experience of digital health technologies, including their emotional and sensory dimensions, the book also assesses their broader impact on medical and public health knowledges, power relations and work practices.Relevant to students and researchers interested in medicine and public health across sociology, psychology, anthropology, new media and cultural studies, as well as policy makers and professionals in the field, this is a timely contribution on an important issue.

This comprehensive text makes an important contribution to the study of surrogacy, developing a novel theoretical framework through which to understand the broader social contexts as well as individual decisions at play within surrogacy arrangements. Drawing on empirical research conducted by the authors and supplemented by secondary analyses of media, legislative and public accounts of surrogacy, the book engages with the key stakeholders involved in the practice of surrogacy. Specifically, it canvases the standpoints of women who act as surrogates, intending parents who commission surrogacy arrangements, children born through surrogacy, clinics that facilitate the arrangements, and politicians and journalists who engage with the topic. Through a focus on capitalism as a means of orientating ourselves to the topic of surrogacy, the book highlights the vulnerabilities that potentially arise in the context of surrogacy, as well as the claims to agency invoked by some parties in order to mitigate vulnerability. In so doing, the book demonstrates that the psychology of surrogacy must be broadly understood as an orientation to particular ways of thinking about children, reproduction and economies of labour.

This comprehensive text makes an important contribution to the study of surrogacy, developing a novel theoretical framework through which to understand the broader social contexts as well as individual decisions at play within surrogacy arrangements. Drawing on empirical research conducted by the authors and supplemented by secondary analyses of media, legislative and public accounts of surrogacy, the book engages with the key stakeholders involved in the practice of surrogacy. Specifically, it canvases the standpoints of women who act as surrogates, intending parents who commission surrogacy arrangements, children born through surrogacy, clinics that facilitate the arrangements, and politicians and journalists who engage with the topic. Through a focus on capitalism as a means of orientating ourselves to the topic of surrogacy, the book highlights the vulnerabilities that potentially arise in the context of surrogacy, as well as the claims to agency invoked by some parties in order to mitigate vulnerability. In so doing, the book demonstrates that the psychology of surrogacy must be broadly understood as an orientation to particular ways of thinking about children, reproduction and economies of labour.

The sexual lives of people with disabilities are rarely discussed. It is as if, because someone has a biological or psychological impairment, they do not exist as a sexual being. As such, many people with disabilities feel marginalised and powerless not only in their day-to-day lives, but also in their ability to form sexual relationships. A range of health issues are raised as a result. Illustrated by research drawn from a range of international contexts, Disability and Sexual Health: A Critical Exploration of Key Issues is the first to examine this important but seldom acknowledged issue. Beginning with an understanding of how both disability and sexuality are socially defined phenomena, the book discusses the implications for the sexual health of people with disabilities, from sexual health education and access to information to STDs and possible sexual exploitation. The book concludes with a chapter recommending inclusive practice in line with the aims of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities.Disability and Sexual Health will be important reading for researchers and students in health psychology, critical psychology and the psychology of sexuality, gender, disability and nursing. It will also be of interest to professionals working with people with disabilities in health care and social work.

Winner of the 2021 BPS Book Award: Academic Text category, this groundbreaking book employs a transdisciplinary and poststructuralist methodology to develop the concept of ‘postfeminist healthism,’ a twenty-first-century understanding of women’s physical and mental health formed at the intersections of postfeminist sensibilities, neoliberal constructs of citizenship and the notion of health as an individual responsibility managed through consumption. Postfeminist healthism is used in this book to explore seven topics where postfeminist sensibility has the most impact on women’s health: self-help, weight, surgical technologies, sex, pregnancy, responsibilities for others’ health and pro-anorexia communities. The book explores the ways in which the desire to be normal and live a good life is tied to expectations of ‘normal-perfection’ circulated across interpersonal interactions, media representations and expert discourses. It diagnoses postfeminist healthism as unhealthy for both those women who participate in it and those whom it excludes and considers how more positive directions may emerge. By exploring the under-researched intersection of postfeminism and health studies, this book will be invaluable to researchers and students in psychology, gender and women’s studies, health research, media studies and sociology.

Winner of the 2021 BPS Book Award: Academic Text category, this groundbreaking book employs a transdisciplinary and poststructuralist methodology to develop the concept of ‘postfeminist healthism,’ a twenty-first-century understanding of women’s physical and mental health formed at the intersections of postfeminist sensibilities, neoliberal constructs of citizenship and the notion of health as an individual responsibility managed through consumption. Postfeminist healthism is used in this book to explore seven topics where postfeminist sensibility has the most impact on women’s health: self-help, weight, surgical technologies, sex, pregnancy, responsibilities for others’ health and pro-anorexia communities. The book explores the ways in which the desire to be normal and live a good life is tied to expectations of ‘normal-perfection’ circulated across interpersonal interactions, media representations and expert discourses. It diagnoses postfeminist healthism as unhealthy for both those women who participate in it and those whom it excludes and considers how more positive directions may emerge. By exploring the under-researched intersection of postfeminism and health studies, this book will be invaluable to researchers and students in psychology, gender and women’s studies, health research, media studies and sociology.