The sociology of health and illness is a rapidly growing field. Yet, as a field, it has suffered from a remarkably limited perspective dominated by scholarship produced in the global north. Scholars in the sociology of health and illness have been late to enter debates in global health and have generally failed to learn lessons from work originating in the global south. To begin to address this limitation, this edited collection features notable contributions from Latin American scholars exploring key issues, including sickle cell disease in Brazil, cancer and Chagas disease in Argentina and reproductive health in Mexico. This collection, offering a snapshot of the rich and nuanced research being conducted in the region, offers readers valuable lessons. It is our argument that Latin American health sociology has much to offer the larger field of sociology – both for what it can teach us about Latin America in and of itself, and for what this field of scholarship can teach us about health and illness as broadly defined. This collection challenges readers to think about the global nature of health inequalities. Rich in empirical data and theoretical substance, this book is an essential collection for readers interested in understanding the sociology of health and illness. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Health Sociology Review and as individual papers in Global Public Health and Critical Public Health.

Anthropology, with its dual emphasis on biology and culture, is--or should be--the discipline most suited to the study of the complex interactions between these aspects of our lives. Unfortunately, since the early decades of this century, biological and cultural anthropology have grown distinct, and a holistic vision of anthropology has suffered. This book brings culture and biology back together in new and refreshing ways. Directly addressing earlier criticisms of biological anthropology, Building a New Biocultural Synthesis concerns how culture and political economy affect human biology--e.g., people's nutritional status, the spread of disease, exposure to pollution--and how biological consequences might then have further effects on cultural, social, and economic systems. Contributors to the volume offer case studies on health, nutrition, and violence among prehistoric and historical peoples in the Americas; theoretical chapters on nonracial approaches to human variation and the development of critical, humanistic and political ecological approaches in biocultural anthropology; and explorations of biological conditions in contemporary societies in relationship to global changes. Building a New Biocultural Synthesis will sharpen and enrich the relevance of anthropology for understanding a wide variety of struggles to cope with and combat persistent human suffering. It should appeal to all anthropologists and be of interest to sister disciplines such as nutrition and sociology. Alan H. Goodman is Professor of Anthropology, Hampshire College. Thomas L. Leatherman is Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of South Carolina.

Throughout Latin America, social medicine has been widely recognized for its critical perspectives on mainstream understandings of health and for its progressive policy achievements. Nevertheless, it has been an elusive subject: hard to define, with puzzling historical discontinuities and misconceptions about its origins. Drawing on a vast archive and with an ambitious narrative scope that transcends national borders, Eric D. Carter offers the first comprehensive intellectual and political history of the social medicine movement in Latin America, from the early twentieth century to the present day. While maintaining a consistent focus on health equity, social medicine has evolved with changing conditions in the region. Carter shows how it shaped early Latin American welfare states, declined with the dominance of midcentury technocratic health planning, resurged in the 1970s in solidarity against authoritarian regimes, and later resisted neoliberal reforms of the health sector. He centers socialist and anarchist doctors, political exiles, intellectuals, populist leaders, and rebellious technocrats from Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and other countries who responded to and shaped a dynamic political environment around health equity. The lessons from this history will inform new thinking about how to achieve health equity in the twenty-first century.

The Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology is a comprehensive collection of twenty-six original essays by leading medical sociologists from all over the world. The articles are organized both topically and by region to provide thorough coverage of the concerns, issues, and future directions of the discipline. This invaluable resource is the most informed, complete, and up-to-date reference on transnational medical sociology available today. Covers both substantive areas in medical sociology and regional perspectives located in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa First comparative perspective to provide a comprehensive view of the field

This interdisciplinary volume gathers selected, refereed contributions on various aspects of public health from several disciplines and research fields, including the philosophy of science, epidemiology, statistics and ethics. The contributions were originally presented at the 1st Barcelona conference of “Philosophy of Public Health” (5th – 7th May 2016). This book is intended for researchers interested in public health and the contemporary debates surrounding it.

This book explores the scope of reforms and changes in the social protection systems in Latin America that have started at the beginning of the 21st century. It describes how and to what extent changes in social protection systems and social policies have occurred in the region in recent decades. Taking a comparative approach, the volume identifies the triggers for the transformations and how such pressures are received by the welfare regime, or a specific policy sector, to finally yield a given type of reform. The analysis is characterized by the presence of certain factors that explain the development of social protection systems in Latin America, such as economic growth, the consolidation of democratic political regimes, and the region’s Left Turns. The book also examines to what extent common challenges and processes induced by international institutions have led to convergence among countries or welfare regimes, or whether each maintains its own identity.