Medicine as Culture: Illness, Disease and the Body, Edition 3
About this ebook
Trudy Rudge, Professor of Nursing, University of Sydney
A welcome update of a text that has become a mainstay of the medical sociologist′s library.
Alan Radley, Emeritus Professor of Social Psychology, Loughborough University
Medicine as Culture introduces students to a broad range of cross-disciplinary theoretical perspectives, using examples that emphasize bodies and visual images. Lupton′s core contrast between lay perspectives on illness and medical power is a useful beginning point for courses teaching health and illness from a socio-cultural perspective.
Arthur Frank, Department of Sociology, University of Calgary
Medicine as Culture is unlike any other sociological text on health and medicine. It combines perspectives drawn from a wide variety of disciplines including sociology, anthropology, social history, cultural geography, and media and cultural studies. The book explores the ways in which medicine and health care are sociocultural constructions, ranging from popular media and elite cultural representations of illness to the power dynamics of the doctor-patient relationship.
The Third Edition has been updated to cover new areas of interest, including:
- studies of space and place in relation to the body
- actor-network theory as it is applied in research related to medicine
- The internet and social media and how they contribute to lay health knowledge and patient support
- complementary and alternative medicine
- obesity and fat politics.
Contextualising introductions and discussion points in every chapter makes Medicine as Culture, Third Edition a rigorous yet accessible text for students.
Deborah Lupton is an independent sociologist and Honorary Associate in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney.
About the author
Deborah Lupton is SHARP professor in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney, working in the Center for Social Research in Health and the Social Policy Research Center and leading the Vitalities Lab. She is the author/co-author of 17 books, the latest of which are Digital Sociology (Routledge, 2015), The Quantified Self (Polity, 2016), Digital Health (Routledge, 2017), Fat, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2018), and Data Selves (Polity, 2019). She is a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and holds an honorary doctor of social science degree awarded by the University of Copenhagen.
