Judith Lorber and Lisa Jean Moore consider the interface between the social institutions of gender and Western medicine in this brief, lively textbook. They offer a distinct feminist viewpoint to analyze issues of power and politics concerning physical illness. For a creative, feminist-oriented alternative to traditional texts on medical sociology, medical anthropology, and the history of medicine, this is an ideal choice.

Judith Lorber and Lisa Jean Moore consider the interface between the social institutions of gender and Western medicine in this brief, lively textbook. They offer a distinct feminist viewpoint to analyze issues of power and politics concerning physical illness. SIGNS labeled the first edition 'a rich and imaginative work.' In the extensively revised second edition of this successful text, the authors add chapters on disability and genital surgeries. They also update and expand their discussions of social epidemiology, AIDS, the health professions, PMS, menopause, and feminist health care. For a creative, feminist-oriented alternative to traditional texts on medical sociology, medical anthropology, and the history of medicine, this is an ideal choice.

Reconfigures familiar concepts in medical sociology to explore how gender, race, class, ethnicity, and culture influence both the experience of symptoms of physical illnesses, and the treatment of the symptoms by the medical establishment. Also offers a gender-informed analysis of the knowledge base and underlying assumptions about illness, and the way questions are asked and research priorities are set. Paper edition (unseen), $17.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Lost in the raging debate over the validity of social construction is the question of what, precisely, is being constructed. Facts, gender, quarks, reality? Ian Hacking’s book explores an array of examples to reveal the deep issues underlying contentious accounts of reality—especially regarding the status of the natural sciences.

The main purpose of this book is to demonstrate that disease is socially produced and distributed. Becoming sick and unhealthy is not the result of individual misfortune or an accident of nature. It is a consequence of the social, political and economic organization of society. In developing this thesis, the author systematically introduces students to the major sociological explanations of the role and functions of medical explanations of disease. The book situates the student securely in the literature and provides a guide to the strengths and weaknesses of the major sociological approaches. It draws out the essential features of the major sociological contributions and elucidates how an appreciation of the dynamics of class, gender, ethnicity and the sociology of knowledge challenges medical power.

The latest version of an important academic resource published about once a decade since 1963

Gender and Health is the first book to examine how men's and women's lives and their physiology contribute to differences in their health. In a thoughtful synthesis of diverse literatures, the authors demonstrate that modern societies' health problems ultimately involve a combination of policies, personal behavior, and choice. The book is designed for researchers, policymakers, and others who seek to understand how the choices of individuals, families, communities, and governments contribute to health. It can inform men and women at each of these levels how to better integrate health implications into their everyday decisions and actions.

The author evaluates critiques of the concept of mental illness and of the way its expanding boundaries now define a far wider range of mental states, experiences and activities as pathological. Arguing that these boundaries need to be restricted, the author contends that many of the phenomena identified as mental illness are normal reactions to life's difficulties and that, while individuals may need support, it is not appropriate or helpful for such phenomena to be treated as indicative of mental disorder. Other important topics covered include the way mental illness is measured, its distribution across populations and over time, and the different types of care provided for those with identified mental illness.

A watershed event in the field of sociology, this text introduced “a major breakthrough in the sociology of knowledge and sociological theory generally” (George Simpson, American Sociological Review). In this seminal book, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann examine how knowledge forms and how it is preserved and altered within a society. Unlike earlier theorists and philosophers, Berger and Luckmann go beyond intellectual history and focus on commonsense, everyday knowledge—the proverbs, morals, values, and beliefs shared among ordinary people. When first published in 1966, this systematic, theoretical treatise introduced the term social construction,effectively creating a new thought and transforming Western philosophy.