How Politics Makes Us Sick

Ted Schrecker and Clare Bambra argue that the obesity, insecurity, austerity and inequality that result from neoliberal (or 'market fundamentalist') policies are hazardous to our health, asserting that these neoliberal epidemics require a political cure.

Ted Schrecker and Clare Bambra argue that the obesity, insecurity, austerity and inequality that result from neoliberal (or 'market fundamentalist') policies are hazardous to our health, asserting that these neoliberal epidemics require a political cure.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER To get ahead today, you have to be a jerk, right? Divisive politicians. Screaming heads on television. Angry campus activists. Twitter trolls. Today in America, there is an “outrage industrial complex” that prospers by setting American against American, creating a “culture of contempt”—the habit of seeing people who disagree with us not as merely incorrect, but as worthless and defective. Maybe, like more than nine out of ten Americans, you dislike it. But hey, either you play along, or you’ll be left behind, right? Wrong. In Love Your Enemies, social scientist and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller From Strength to Strength Arthur C. Brooks shows that abuse and outrage are not the right formula for lasting success. Brooks blends cutting-edge behavioral research, ancient wisdom, and a decade of experience leading one of America’s top policy think tanks in a work that offers a better way to lead based on bridging divides and mending relationships. Brooks’ prescriptions are unconventional. To bring America together, we shouldn’t try to agree more. There is no need for mushy moderation, because disagreement is the secret to excellence. Civility and tolerance shouldn’t be our goals, because they are hopelessly low standards. And our feelings toward our foes are irrelevant; what matters is how we choose to act. Love Your Enemies offers a clear strategy for victory for a new generation of leaders. It is a rallying cry for people hoping for a new era of American progress. Most of all, it is a roadmap to arrive at the happiness that comes when we choose to love one another, despite our differences.

DIVAn account of sick building syndrome and the large number of historical conditions--office worker protests, feminism, ventilation engineering, toxicology, etc.--that coalesced to give this phenomenon real existence./div

What makes women sick? To an Ecuadorean woman, it's nervios from constant worry about her children's illnesses. To a woman working in a New Mexico electronics factory, it's the solvents that leave her with a form of dementia. To a Ugandan woman, it's HIV from her husband's sleeping with the widow of an AIDS patient. To a Bangladeshi woman, it's a fatal infection following an IUD insertion. What they all share is a recognition that their sickness is somehow caused by situations they face every day at home and at work. In this clearly written and compelling book, Lesley Doyal investigates the effects of social, economic, and cultural conditions on women's health. The "fault line" of gender that continues to divide all societies has, Doyal demonstrates, profound and pervasive consequences for the health of women throughout the world. Her broad synthesis highlights variations between men and women in patterns of health and illness, and it identifies inequalities in medical care that separate groups of women from each other. Doyal's wide-ranging arguments, her wealth of data, her use of women's voices from many cultures--and her examples of women mobilizing to find their own solutions--make this book required reading for everyone concerned with women's health.

A sobering account of a disenfranchised American working class and important policy solutions to the nation's economic inequalities One of the country's leading scholars on economics and social policy, Isabel Sawhill addresses the enormous divisions in American society--economic, cultural, and political--and what might be done to bridge them. Widening inequality and the loss of jobs to trade and technology has left a significant portion of the American workforce disenfranchised and skeptical of governments and corporations alike. And yet both have a role to play in improving the country for all. Sawhill argues for a policy agenda based on mainstream values, such as family, education, and work. Although many have lost faith in government programs designed to help them, there are still trusted institutions on both the local and the federal level that can deliver better job opportunities and higher wages to those who have been left behind. At the same time, the private sector needs to reexamine how it trains and rewards employees. This book provides a clear-headed and middle-way path to a better-functioning society in which personal responsibility is honored and inclusive capitalism and more broadly shared growth are once more the norm.

This contributed volume is the first in-depth analysis of the health policies of populist radical right (PRR) parties worldwide and their actual involvement in health care. The prominence of authoritarian, nationalistic, and populist parties is expanding steadily. However, it is often difficult to discern what kind of policies they really stand for, particularly with regard to the welfare state and public health, where research remains sparse. This book fills this critical gap. The text connects PRR parties and leaders with actual health and social policy effects in Eastern and Western Europe as well as in the United States, Brazil, and the Philippines. The chapters highlight ten individual country case studies authored by young scholars and professors with political science and health experts: The Austrian Freedom Party in Government: A Threat to Public Health? The Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Health Policy: Normalization or Containment of Populist Radical Right Tendencies? Populist Radical Right Influence on Health Policy in the Netherlands: The Case of the Party for Freedom (PVV) The Evolution of the Populist Radical Right and Their Impact on Health in Italy The Populist Radical Right and Health in Hungary Is the Polish 'Law and Justice' (PiS) a Typical Populist Radical Right Party? A Health Policy Perspective The Case of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) Rhetoric and Reality in the United States of America: Trump, Populism, and Health Policy Ruling Through Chaos in Brazil: Bolsonaro's Authoritarian Agenda for Public Health An Authoritarian Reaction to COVID-19 in the Philippines: A Strong Commitment to Universal Health Care Combined with Violent Securitization The Populist Radical Right and Health is exceptionally timely and essential reading for political science and health colleagues researching and writing about PRR parties and leaders; students and faculty in public health, health and social policy, and political science; and anyone interested in learning more about this topic.

The world is in a terrible mess. It is toxic, irradiated, and full of injustice. Aiming to stand aside from the mess can produce a seemingly satisfying self-righteousness in the scant moments we achieve it, but since it is ultimately impossible, individual purity will always disappoint. Might it be better to understand complexity and, indeed, our own complicity in much of what we think of as bad, as fundamental to our lives? Against Purity argues that the only answer—if we are to have any hope of tackling the past, present, and future of colonialism, disease, pollution, and climate change—is a resounding yes. Proposing a powerful new conception of social movements as custodians for the past and incubators for liberated futures, Against Purity undertakes an analysis that draws on theories of race, disability, gender, and animal ethics as a foundation for an innovative approach to the politics and ethics of responding to systemic problems. Being against purity means that there is no primordial state we can recover, no Eden we have desecrated, no pretoxic body we might uncover through enough chia seeds and kombucha. There is no preracial state we could access, no erasing histories of slavery, forced labor, colonialism, genocide, and their concomitant responsibilities and requirements. There is no food we can eat, clothes we can buy, or energy we can use without deepening our ties to complex webbings of suffering. So, what happens if we start from there? Alexis Shotwell shows the importance of critical memory practices to addressing the full implications of living on colonized land; how activism led to the official reclassification of AIDS; why we might worry about studying amphibians when we try to fight industrial contamination; and that we are all affected by nuclear reactor meltdowns. The slate has never been clean, she reminds us, and we can’t wipe off the surface to start fresh—there’s no fresh to start. But, Shotwell argues, hope found in a kind of distributed ethics, in collective activist work, and in speculative fiction writing for gender and disability liberation that opens new futures.