The War Machine and Global Health: A Critical Medical Anthropological Examination of the Human Costs of Armed Conflict and the International Violence Industry - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0759111901 ISBN 13: 9780759111905

Publisher: AltaMira Press (UK), 2010

Synopsis

In the contemporary world, war rivals infectious disease as a global cause of morbidity and mortality. Since the end of World War II, there have been at least 160 wars around the world with as many as 25 million (and probably many more) people killed, most of them civilians. Directly or indirectly, war touches the lives of most people on the planet, often with lasting and costly impact. Framed by the holistic and ethnographically grounded theoretical perspective of critical medical anthropology, and more broadly by the political economy of health, this book of essays by leading medical anthropologists and other health social scientists carefully examines the global effects of war, the war industry, and the international weapons trade on human health and well-being. Further, this book goes beyond offering a lively and readable account of a pressing health concern by critically analyzing the political and economic forces driving the war machine to inflict ever-increasing levels of social suffering and loss of life.

About this title

About the Author

Merrill Singer is professor emeritus in the Departments of Anthropology and Community Medicine at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Singer has published 290 scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters, and has authored, co-authored or edited thirty-three books. His research and writing have addressed syndemics, HIV/AIDS and STDs in highly vulnerable and disadvantaged populations, illicit drug use and drinking behavior, infectious disease, community and structural violence, and the political ecology of health, including the health consequences of climate change. Dr. Singer has been awarded the Rudolph Virchow Professional Prize, the George Foster Memorial Award for Practicing Anthropology, both the AIDS and Anthropology Research Group’s Distinguished Service Award and its Clark Taylor Professional Paper Prize, the Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America, and the Solon T. Kimball Award for Public and Applied Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association.

Edition details

• Publisher: AltaMira Press (UK)
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0759111901
• ISBN 13: 9780759111905
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 332
• Editor: Merrill Singer, G. Derrick Hodge