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Art De Vany has been dubbed an "evolutionary fitness guru" for his endorsement of the food choices and physical regimens of the Stone Age. Despite his 73 years he runs daily in the Arizona desert, and has none of the ailments the industrial world considers to be a normal part of getting old. Like De Vany, a growing number of researchers in the field of evolutionary medicine believe that modern diet and lifestyle practices are responsible for maladies...
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"Exploring the long standing question of the origins of syphilis, this book proposes a new understanding of the dynamic interactions of disease and culture in the New World. It brings together a complete picture of the diverse pathological evidence of treponematosis, a bacterial disease manifest in the North American archaeological record at the time of Christopher Columbus's first journey, presenting a strong argument against the earlier identification...
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"In a world filled with more people who are overweight than underweight, public health and medical perspectives paint obesity as a catastrophic epidemic that threatens to overwhelm health systems and undermine life expectancies globally. In many societies, being obese creates profound personal suffering because it is so culturally stigmatized. yet despite loud messages about the health and social costs of obesity, weight gain is a seemingly universal...
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"Recent interest in new diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and Ebola, and the resurgence of older diseases like tuberculosis has fostered questions about the history of human infectious diseases. How did they evolve? Where did they originate? What natural factors have stalled the progression of diseases or made them possible? How does a microorganism become a pathogen? How have infectious diseases changed through time? What can we do to control their occurrence?"...
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"Drawing on Medical Texts and food therapy practices from around the world and throughout history, Nancy N. Chen locates old and new crossovers between food and medicine in different social and cultural contexts. The consumption of spices, sugar, and salt was once linked to specific healing properties, and trade in these commodities transformed not just the political economy of Europe, Asia, and the New World but local tastes and food practices as...
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"Enlisting thirteen anthropologists and one fat activist, editors and anthropologists Don Kulick and Anne Meneley have produced an unconventional and unprecedented examination of fat as a concept, a substance, and a lifestyle. Edgy and non-judgmental, Fat steers the conversation away from the heavily trodden ground of health, cosmetic concerns, and cheap jokes, and moves it in a completely different direction, dissecting familiar institutions like...
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Publisher description for Bipolar expeditions : mania and depression in American culture / Emily Martin. Manic behavior holds an undeniable fascination in American culture today. It fuels the plots of best-selling novels and the imagery of MTV videos, is acknowledged as the driving force for successful entrepreneurs like Ted Turner, and is celebrated as the source of the creativity of artists like Vincent Van Gogh and movie stars like Robin Williams....
11) Flexible bodies: tracking immunity in American culture from the days of polio to the age of AIDS
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Martin shows how Americans' ideas about health and immunity have changed dramatically since the 1940s and how "flexibility" has become a valued commodity--both in health and in business.
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Scripting Addiction takes readers into the highly ritualized world of mainstream American addiction treatment. It is a world where clinical practitioners evaluate how drug users speak about themselves and their problems, and where the ideal of "healthy" talk is explicitly promoted, carefully monitored, and identified as the primary sign of therapeutic progress. The book explores the puzzling question: why do addiction counselors dedicate themselves...
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"Loustaunau and Sobo demonstrate the ways in which cultural and social factors shape medicine and health care. After a discussion of culture, the social structure and the impact of poverty, class, gender, and family patterns on health, illness and care-seeking, they explain the similarities and differences of medical systems cross-culturally. The authors call for a more flexible and culturally sensitive system of health care that expresses caring...
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A witch's curse, an imperialist conspiracy, a racist plot - HIV/AIDS is a catastrophic health crisis with complex cultural dimensions. Explanations of where it comes from, who gets it, and who dies are tied to political agendas, religious beliefs, and the psychology of devastating grief. Witches, Westerners, and HIV is the first in-depth study investigating and comparing beliefs about witchcraft and conspiracies surrounding HIV/AIDS in Africa. Alexander...
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Elizabeth de la Portilla writes of the world and practices of San Antonio curanderas. As a scholar, an ethnographer, and a curandera in training, her parallel perspectives uniquely aid readers in understanding this subordinated culture. Retelling the stories various healers have shared, interpreting their answers to her probing questions, and describing the herbs and recipes they use in their arts, the author vividly illuminates the borderland context...
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Bringing together essays by nineteen respected scholars, this volume approaches dementia from a variety of angles, exploring its historical, psychological, and philosophical implications. The authors employ a cross-cultural perspective that is based on ethnographic fieldwork and focuses on questions of age, mind, voice, self, loss, temporality, memory, and affect.
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"Deep China investigates the emotional and moral lives of the Chinese people as they adjust to the challenges of modernity. Sharing a medical anthropology and cultural psychiatry perspective, the contributors--Arthur Kleinman, Yunxiang Yan, Jing Jun, Sing Lee, Everett Zhang, Pan Tianshu, Wu Fei, and Guo Jinhua--explore the remaking of the moral person during China's profound social and economic transformation, unraveling the shifting practices and...
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Illuminates the wondrous yet disquieting medical realm of organ transplantation by drawing on the voices of those most deeply involved: transplant recipients, clinical specialists, and the surviving kin of deceased organ donors. This ethnographic study explores how these parties think about death, loss, and mourning.
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The stories of ten women healers form the core of this provocative journey into cultural healing methods utilized by women. In a truly grass-roots project, the authors take the reader along to listen to the voices of Native American medicine women, Southwest Hispanic curanderas, and women physicians as they describe their healing paths. This book will fascinate anyone interested in the relationship between illness and healing-medical practitioners...
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