In Hospital Land USA, Wendy Simonds analyzes the wide-reaching powers of medicalization: the dynamic processes by which medical authorities, institutions, and ideologies impact our everyday experiences, culture, and social life. Simonds documents her own Hospital Land adventures and draws on a wide range of U.S. cultural representations ― from memoirs to medical mail, from hospital signs to disaster movies ― in order to urge critical thinking about conventional notions of care, health, embodiment, identity, suffering, and mortality. This book is intended for general readers, medical practitioners, undergraduate and graduate students in courses on medical sociology, medicine, medical ethics, nursing, public health, carework, visual culture, cultural studies, and gerontology.

Product Description: Introducing the Social Sciences for Midwifery Practice makes clear the links between social, anthropological and psychological concepts, midwifery practice and women’s experience of birth. Demonstrating how empathising with women and understanding the context in which they live can affect childbirth outcomes and experiences, this evidence-based text emphasises the importance of compassionate and humane care in midwifery practice...read more

Product Description: Introducing the Social Sciences for Midwifery Practice makes clear the links between social, anthropological and psychological concepts, midwifery practice and women’s experience of birth. Demonstrating how empathising with women and understanding the context in which they live can affect childbirth outcomes and experiences, this evidence-based text emphasises the importance of compassionate and humane care in midwifery practice...read more

Product Description: Clinical sociology is an action-oriented field that seeks to prevent, reduce, or resolve the seemingly overwhelming number of social problems confronting modern society. In an extensive revision of the first edition of this classic text and reference, published by Plenum in 1990, the editors have assembled a distinguished roster of contributors to address such topics as theory and practice; intervention at various levels of social organization; specific kinds of sociological practice; social problems; and the process of becoming a clinical sociologist...read more

Composed entirely of specially commissioned chapters by many outstanding scholars in medical sociology, this edition reflects important changes in the study of health and illness. In addition to updated and reconceived chapters on the impacts of gender, race, and inequality on health, this volume has new chapters on topics that include:• social networks, neighborhoods, and social capital• disability• dying and "the right to die"• health disparities• the growing influence of the pharmaceutical industry• the Internet• evidence-based medicine and quality of care• health social movements• genetics• religion, spirituality, and health

How have sociologists theorized and researched mental health and illness? In what ways do sociologists approach this topic differently to those from other disciplines? How do we understand mental health problems in their social context? This bestselling book provides a clear overview of the major aspects of the sociology of mental health and illness, and helps students to develop a critical approach to the subject. In this new edition, the authors update each of the chapters, taking into consideration recent relevant literature from social science and social psychiatry. A new chapter has been included on the impact of stigma, which covers an analysis of the responses of the lay public to mental health and illness and representations of mental health (particularly in the media) in a post-institutional context. A Sociology of Mental Health and Illness is a key teaching and learning resource for undergraduates and postgraduates studying a range of medical sociology and health-related courses, as well as trainee mental health workers in the fields of social work, nursing, clinical psychology and psychiatry.

Product Description: The second edition of Mildred Blaxter's successful and highly respected book offers a comprehensive and engaging introduction to the key debates surrounding the concept of health today. It discusses how health is defined, constructed, experienced and acted out in contemporary developed societies, drawing on a range of empirical data from the USA, Britain, France, and many other countries...read more

Product Description: This textbook in the Illustrated Colour Text series offers an integrated treatment of sociology and psychology for medical students. It is presented in a much more colourful and graphic format than is usual for books on these two subjects...read more

Product Description: 'Sociology of Memory: Papers from the Spectrum' presents sociological research regarding memory in various forms; that is, memory conceptualized and utilized by institutions as small as the family or as large as institutionalized electronic 'commodity' memory computer banks or the banked biological DNA 'memory' of entire populations...read more

Product Description: Since the end of World War II, biology and medicine have merged in remarkably productive ways. In this book Peter Keating and Alberto Cambrosio analyze the transformation of medicine into biomedicine and its consequences, ranging from the recasting of hospital architecture to the redefinition of the human body, disease, and therapeutic practices...read more

Product Description: '"Sociology & Health Care" is easy to read and offers an introduction into selected, but key areas, of the sociology of health and illness. It is a useful book for health care students as well as health care workers who are interested in the social aspects of their work, their job and how it all fits into the wider society' - Sociological Research Online...read more

Product Description: This unique reference offers an integrated "behavioural science" approach to psychology and sociology as they relate to medicine. The 2nd Edition has been completely revised and updated to reflect all of today's trends, as well as suggestions from student readers...read more

Product Description: The fifth edition of this classic textbook that to explore the origins, nature and context of illness in society, and provides a framework for understanding the relationship between health, health care and the society in which it occurs...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: This valuable text integrates sociology and psychology to focus on how each impact and affect medicine. Presented in a highly visual double-page spread format with over 170 high-quality illustrations, this resource includes discussion of the life cycle, society and health, preventing illness and promoting health, and much more...read more