Embodying Inequality

To advance the epidemiological analysis of social inequalities in health, and of the ways in which population distributions of disease, disability, and death reflect embodied expressions of social inequality, this volume draws on articles published in the "International Journal of Health Services" between 1990 and 2000. Framed by ecosocial theory, it employs ecosocial constructs of "embodiment"; "pathways of embodiment"; "cumulative interplay of exposure, susceptibility, and resistance across the lifecourse"; and "accountability and agency" to address the question; and who and what drives current and changing patterns of social inequalities in health.

To advance the epidemiological analysis of social inequalities in health, and of the ways in which population distributions of disease, disability, and death reflect embodied expressions of social inequality, this volume draws on articles published in the "International Journal of Health Services" between 1990 and 2000. Framed by ecosocial theory, it employs ecosocial constructs of "embodiment"; "pathways of embodiment"; "cumulative interplay of exposure, susceptibility, and resistance across the lifecourse"; and "accountability and agency" to address the question; and who and what drives current and changing patterns of social inequalities in health.

"Elana D. Buch's "Inequalities of Aging: Paradoxes of Independence in American Home Care" focuses on the topic of American home care and explores various contradictions and points of tension within the industry. It also raises awareness of the problematic inequality that exists in the American home care industry and argues for the creation of a more sustainable system."--

By portraying the circumstances of people living with chronic conditions in radically different contexts, from Alzheimer’s patients in the UK to homeless people with psychiatric disorders in India, Managing Chronicity in Unequal States offers glimpses of what dealing with medically complex conditions in stratified societies means. While in some places the state regulates and intrudes on the most intimate aspects of chronic living, in others it is utterly and criminally absent. Either way, it is a present/absent actor that deeply conditions people’s opportunities and strategies of care. This book explores how individuals, groups and communities navigate uncertain and unequal healthcare systems, in which inherent moral judgements on human worth have long-lasting effects on people’s wellbeing. This is key reading for anyone wishing to deconstruct the issues at stake when analysing how care and chronicity are entangled with multiple institutional, economic, and other circumstantial factors. How people access the available informal and formal resources as well as how they react to official diagnoses and decisions are important facets of the management of chronicity. In the arena of care, people with chronic conditions find themselves negotiating restrictions and handling issues of power and (inter)dependency in relationships of inequality and proximity. This is particularly relevant in current times, when care has given in to the lure of the market, and the possibility of living a long and fulfilling life has been drastically reduced, transformed into a ‘reward’ for the few who have been deemed worthy of it.

Native Americans, researchers increasingly worry, are disproportionately victims of epidemics and poor health because they “fail” to seek medical care, are “non-compliant” patients, or “lack immunity” enjoyed by the “mainstream” population. Challenging this dominant approach to indigenous health, Juliet McMullin shows how it masks more fundamental inequalities that become literally embodied in Native Americans, shifting blame from unequal social relations to biology, individual behavior, and cultural or personal deficiencies. Weaving a complex story of Native Hawai’ian health in its historical, political, and cultural context, she shows how traditional practices that integrated relationships of caring for the land, the body, and the ancestors are being revitalized both on the islands and in the indigenous diaspora. For the fields of medical anthropology, public health, nursing, epidemiology, and indigenous studies, McMullin’s important book offers models for more effective and culturally appropriate approaches to building healthy communities.

This book highlights the embodied knowledge of persons with disabilities as a vital resource for understanding equality without taking disability and development for granted. The perspective of embodied inequality offers alternative ways to comprehend our “normality” as until now the notion of normality has too frequently excluded persons with disabilities and their perspectives. Disability inclusion has never been as important as it is today in the development discourse, yet systematic discrimination against people due to their disabilities persists. To address this, the link between theories and practices is strengthened in this book. Through using different contexts in the different book chapters, the readers are informed of how profoundly inequalities are embedded in our society and pronounced as embodied experiences of persons with disabilities. The chapters are written not only by academics but also by disability activists and NGO representatives. The chapters focus on disabilities and development as embodied inequalities manifested at different levels, including theory, law, and policy and practice. In conclusion, the book presents 6 A’s as lessons learned from decolonial understanding and conceptions of embodied inequalities in different contexts of disability and development: Availability, Affordability, Accessibility, Accountability, Assistance, and Affection.

Drawing upon the empirical scholarship and research expertise of contributors from all settled continents and from diverse life settings and economies, Viral Loads illustrates how the COVID-19 pandemic, and responses to it, lay bare and load onto people’s lived realities in countries around the world. A crosscutting theme pertains to how social unevenness and gross economic disparities are shaping global and local responses to the pandemic, and illustrate the effects of both the virus and efforts to contain it in ways that amplify these inequalities. At the same time, the contributions highlight the nature of contemporary social life, including virtual communication, the nature of communities, neoliberalism and contemporary political economies, and the shifting nature of nation states and the role of government. Over half of the world’s population has been affected by restrictions of movement, with physical distancing requirements and self-isolation recommendations impacting profoundly on everyday life but also on the economy, resulting also, in turn, with dramatic shifts in the economy and in mass unemployment. By reflecting on how the pandemic has interrupted daily lives, state infrastructures and healthcare systems, the contributing authors in this volume mobilise anthropological theories and concepts to locate the pandemic in a highly connected and exceedingly unequal world. The book is ambitious in its scope – spanning the entire globe – and daring in its insistence that medical anthropology must be a part of the growing calls to build a new world.

By investigating how contemporary cultural discourses of childhood obesity are experienced by children, Laura Backstrom illustrates how deeply fat stigma is internalized during the early socialization experiences of children. Weighty Problems finds that embodied inequality is constructed and negotiated through a number of interactional processes including resocialization, stigma management, social comparisons, and attribution.