Short description:

Using real-life examples and case histories and a highly readable, jargon-free style, this volume addresses the complex interactions between health, illness, and culture. Integrating these issues with the practice of healthcare, the book addresses current concerns about the multi-cultural context of caring for patients. This edition?in color for the first time?includes coverage of poverty and inequality of healthcare, genetics, telemedicine, migration medicine, HIV/AIDS, obesity and malnutrition, and developments in medical technology. A companion website features extensive additional material and printable clinical questionnaires.

Long description:

Culture, Health and Illness is the leading international textbook on the role of cultural and social factors in health, illness, and medical care. Since first published in 1984, it has been used in over 40 countries within universities, medical schools and nursing colleges. This new edition meets the ever-growing need for a clear starting point in understanding the clinical significance of cultural and social factors. The book addresses the complex interactions between health, illness and culture by setting out anthropological theory in a highly readable, jargon-free style and integrating this with the practice of health care using real-life examples and case histories.



Fully revised throughout, the fifth edition has expanded its coverage of topics that are challenging both the patient and the carer's understanding of health and illness: poverty and inequality of healthcare, genetics, biotechnology, the internet and health, chronic diseases, drug-resistant infections, changes in nutrition and body image, medical care of migrants, medical technology, global pandemics such as AIDS and malaria, drug and alcohol dependence, and patients' 'languages of distress', a complex topic central to the doctor-patient relationship.


In today's world of increasing cultural, religious and ethnic diversity of populations, Culture, Health and Illness is essential reading for students of medicine, nursing, psychiatry, public health, health education, international health and medical anthropology, across the globe.

Praise for earlier edition: 'When with humility we are ready to use this excellent book, we will better apply our science toward improving the quality of life throughout the globe'

Praise for earlier edition: 'This book can be thoroughly recommended for its fresh perspective on medical transactions'

Praise for earlier edition: 'It is clearly written and structured, a valuable source for current references, and easily accessible to the interested general reader or student of the field'

Table of Contents:

Preface to the 5th Edition
1. Introduction: the scope of medical anthropology
2. The body: cultural definitions of anatomy and physiology
3. Diet and Nutrition
4. Caring and curing: the sectors of health care
5. Doctor-patient interactions
6. Gender and reproduction
7. Pain and culture
8. Culture and pharmacology: drugs, alcohol and tobacco
9. Ritual and the management of misfortune
10. Cross-cultural psychiatry
11. Cultural aspects of stress and suffering
12. Migration, globalization and health
13. Telemedicine and the Internet
14. New bodies, new selves: genetics and biotechnology
15. Cultural factors in epidemiology
16. The AIDS pandemic
17. Tropical diseases: malaria and leprosy
18. Medical anthropology and global health
19. New research methods in medical anthropology
Appendix: Journals and websites
Author index
Subject index