This outstanding collection of essays by Renee C. Fox encompasses almost thirty years of original, pioneering research in the sociology of medicine. Based on fieldwork in a variety of medical settings in the United States, Belgium, and Zaire, these ethnographic essays examine chronic and terminal illness, medical research, therapeutic innovation, medical education and socialization, and bio-ethics. Within this framework, three empirical "cases" have been singled out for special scrutiny--the process of becoming a physician, the development of the artificial kidney machine and organ transplantation, and the evolution of medical research in Belgium. Without ignoring social structural or psychodynamic factors, Dr. Fox has explored basic cultural phenomena and questions associated with health, illness, and medicine: values, beliefs, symbols, rites, and the nuances of language: ethical and existential dilemmas and dualities; and the complex interrelationships between medicine, science, religion, and magic. She draws systematically and imaginatively upon anthropological, psychological, historical, and biological insights and integrates observations and analyses from her own studies in American, Western European, and Central African societies. This second, augmented edition includes Professor Fox's more recent contributions to the expanding field of the sociology of medicine. They are "The Evolution of Medical Uncertainty; The Human Condition of Health Professionals; Reflections on the Utah Artificial Heart Program; Is Religion Important in Belgium?; Medical Morality is Not Bioethics"--"Medical Ethics in China and the United States; "and "Medicine, Science and Technology. "The work also includes a new introduction, "Endings, Beginnings and Continuities." Now, anthropologists, sociologists, medical educators, scientists, researchers, and students can join her on her "journeys into the field" and share with her the priceless insights to be gained from the physicians, nurses, medical students, patients, and their families, who are working, living, and dying on the edge of what is known, scrutable, and remediable--on the edge of medical science.

Turner has provided a major synthesis of his earlier work on the sociology of the body, establishing the idea of embodiment as fundamental to the sociology of health and illness, and guiding the way to new areas of cultural analysis. This volume is a major university text for sociology, philosophy, and feminist theory.

Doctors and patients, inter-professional rivalries, how sociologists might tackle the study of vital topics in health - all these are enduring themes in sociology and medicine. These are also the long-running intellectual preoccupations of Philip M. Strong's twenty-year contribution to the field - one which he did much to shape. Posthumously gathered together for the first time in this volume, are twelve of his major essays, many of which are difficult to find or have been out of print for some years. Grouped by theme, this important reference allows the reader to trace the development of Strong's thought over his career as well as the more general development of medical sociology as a whole.