This volume provides a comparative European overview focusing upon the main areas of social construction as it relates to health and illness. This includes an emphasis upon lay beliefs and the different way understandings of health can impact upon health behaviour. The contributors also examine health knowledge and the interaction and comparison between lay and professional knowledge systems. The book will be of particular interest to those studying, researching and working in the fields of health and the sociology of health and the body.

This reader brings together recent writing on health, illness and health care in contemporary society. It emphasizes the empirical nature of medical sociology and its relationship with the development of sociological theory.

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.

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.

For undergraduate courses in Sociology of Health and Illness, Medical Sociology, Medical Anthropology, Urban Studies, Social Medicine, and Nursing, this text presents a critical, holistic interpretation of health, illness, and human bodies that emphasizes power as a key social-structural factor in health and in societal responses to illness.

This comprehensive book celebrates the coming of age of narrativein health care. It uses narrative to go beyond the patient's storyand address social, cultural, ethical, psychological,organizational and linguistic issues. This book has been written to help health professionals andsocial scientists to use narrative more effectively in theireveryday work and writing. The book is split into three, comprehensive sections;Narratives, Counter-narratives and Meta-narratives.