Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality: 18 (Biopolitics) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814795927 ISBN 13: 9780814795927

Publisher: NYU Press, 2010

Synopsis

Against Health argues that health is a concept, a norm, and a set of bodily practices whose ideological work is often rendered invisible by the assumption that it is a monolithic, universal good.

About this title

Review:

"From obesity to mental health to pharmacology, the essays explore the ways in which "public" health translates increasingly as a moral judgement of behavior."-Society Magazine, Society Magazine

"This book provides a strong antidote to the common notion that health is an unqualified good and often an individual responsibility."-Peter Conrad, Sociology of Health & Illness

"[A]n important new book."-Psychology Today

"[T]his collection of essays reexamines the definition of 'health, ' particularly as a mechanism for moral judgment... Lots of food for thought- this highly philosophical book... will be of interest to those wanting to stretch their views on health care."-Library Journal

"A powerful group of essays, and the topics addressed in the respective chapters are interesting, insightful, and thought-provoking."
-David Serlin, author of Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America

"These essays are well-researched and supported, and this volume is suitable for academic study--in sociology, bioethics public health and public policy. It is also remarkably well written and engaging, and makes its sophisticated theoretical premises readily accessible to a wide audience."-Lisa Bellatoni, Metapsychology Reviews

About the Author:

Jonathan M. Metzl is Associate Professor in the Women's Studies Department and the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan, where he also directs the program in culture, Health, and medicine. He is the author of Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs and Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease. Anna Kirkland is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Associate Professor of Women's Studies and Political Science at the University of Michigan.

About this edition

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0814795927
• ISBN 13: 9780814795927
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 226
• Editor: Metzl Jonathan M., Kirkland Anna