Medicine, Health and Risk: Sociological Approaches

Medicine, Health and Risk offers a lively appraisal of the range of personal and public health issues facing lay people and experts in Britain and other industrialized countries. In particular it focuses on the manner in which people perceive and manage health risks in different settings; the risk acceptability of various medical interventions; the opportunities and constraints on social movements to influence the policy process with regard to public health risks and the way that health risks are socially constructed and regulated.
Through case studies and overviews of health risks from medical interventions, occupational practices, social and domestic life and environmental hazards the contributors address a range of questions including the following: What role do social, cultural and institutional processes play in the perception of health risks? To what extent do calculations about the probability of health risks or the acceptability of medical interventions influence the decisions and actions of specific social groups? How are health risks constructed and legitimated by scientists, governments and social movements? How do expert discourses on health risks throw light on key elements of social order and cultural change?
Written in a clear and accessible style, Medicine, Health and Risk will appeal to sociologists and policy analysts alike.

Spis treści:
1. Health, medicine and risk: The need for a sociological approach: Jonathan Gabe.
2. Perceptions of Health Risks and their Management. .
A User′s guide to Contrasting Theories of HIV–Related Risk Behaviour: Mick Bloor (University of Wales College of Cardiff).
Risk. the real world and naive sociology: Anne Grinyer.
3. The Risk Acceptability of Medical Interventions. .
The Medical Model of the Body as a Site of Risk: A Case Study of Childbirth: Karen Lane (Deakin University).
The Risk of Resistance: Perspectives on the Mass Childhood Immunisation Programme: Anne Rogers and David Pilgrim (University of Central Lancashire).
4. Social Movements, Public Health Risks and the Policy Process. .
Popular Epidemiology, Toxic Waste and Social Movements: Phil Brown (Brown University).
Public Health Risks in the Material World: Barriers to Social Movements in Health Policy: Paul Bissell, Jennie Popay and Gareth Williams (Manchester University, Salford University).
5. The Social Construction of Health Risks and their Regulation.
Boundaries of Danger and Uncertainty: An Analysis of the Technological Culture of Risk Assessment: Simon Carter (University of Glasgow).
Prevention as a Problem of Modernity: The Example of HIV and AIDS: Sue Scott and Richard Freeman (University of Stirling, University of Dundee).
Notes on Contributors.
Index.

Nota biograficzna:
Jonathon Gabe is a Senior Research Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has published widely in the areas of mental health, health care professions, health policy and the mass media and health. He is a co–editor of the journal Sociology of Health and Illness.

Okładka tylna:
Medicine, Health and Risk offers a lively appraisal of the range of personal and public health issues facing lay people and experts in Britain and other industrialized countries. In particular it focuses on the manner in which people perceive and manage health risks in different settings; the risk acceptability of various medical interventions; the opportunities and constraints on social movements to influence the policy process with regard to public health risks and the way that health risks are socially constructed and regulated.
Through case studies and overviews of health risks from medical interventions, occupational practices, social and domestic life and environmental hazards the contributors address a range of questions including the following: What ro le do social, cultural and institutional processes play in the perception of health risks? To what extent do calculations about the probability of health risks or the acceptability of medical interventions influence the decisions and actions of specific social groups? How are health risks constructed and legitimated by scientists, governments and social movements? How do expert discourses on health risks throw light on key elements of social order and cultural change?
Written in a clear and accessible style, Medicine, Health and Risk will appeal to sociologists and policy analysts alike.