Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Ranging across academic disciplines and historical time periods, the essays in "Morality and Health" offer a compelling assessment of the powerful role of moral systems for judging the complex questions of risk and responsibility for disease, the experience of illness, and social and cultural responses to those who are sick. Contributors focus on the history of attitudes and values about particular disease-related behaviors such as drinking, smoking and diet, as well as social, psychological and cultural perspectives on the process by which morality shapes our understanding of who gets sick and why.
Contributors include Keith Thomas, Charles Rosenberg, Richard Shweder, Arthur Kleinman, David Mechanic, Nancy Tomes and Linda Gordon.
Synopsis
From the castigation and stigmatization of victims of AIDS to our celebration of diet, exercise and fitness, the moral categorization of health and disease reflects contemporary notions that disease results from moral failure and that health is the representation of moral triumph. Ranging across academic disciplines and historical time periods, the essays in Morality and Health offer a compelling assessment of the powerful role of moral systems for judging the complex questions of risk and responsibility for disease, the experience of illness, and social and cultural responses to those who are sick. Contributors include Keith Thomas, Charles Rosenberg, Richard Shweder, Arthur Kleinman, David Mechanic, Nancy Tomes and Linda Gordon.