Modernity, Medicine and Health

This book establishes the voice of medical sociology in key debates in the social sciences. Concerning modernity, postmodernity, structuralism and poststructuralism issues covered include: * disease and medicine in postmodern times * gender, health and the feminist debate on the postmodern * ageing, the lifecourse and the sociology of health and ageing * medicine and complementary medicine * death in postmodernity.

Graham Scambler is Reader in Sociology and Director of the Unit of Medical Sociology at University College London. Paul Higgs is Lecturer in Medical Sociology also at University College London.

List of contributors, Introduction, 1 Postmodernity and health, 2 The promise of postmodernism for the sociology of health and medicine, 3 Medical sociology and modernity: reflections on the public sphere and the roles of intellectuals and social critics, 4 Issues at the interface of medical sociology and public health, 5 Explaining health inequalities: how useful are concepts of social class?, 6 Gender, health and the feminist debate on postmodernism, 7 In search of the 'missing body': pain, suffering and the (post) modern condition, 8 Ageing, the lifecourse and the sociology of embodiment, 9 Risk, governmentality and the reconceptualization of citizenship, 10 Medicine and complementary medicine: challenge and change, 11 Postmodern adventures of life and death, Index