2010-10-01,Subrata Kundu,Health Sector Reforms in Orissa: Lessons for Developing Countries,Hardback,978-1-4438-2343-2,44.99,"In analysing the phenomenon of health sector reforms, this book proposes a new conceptual framework of analysis and ethnography as a methodological tool which could be used effectively in various country contexts compared to what the existing theoretical frameworks do. Thus, apart from generating new knowledge in health sector, this study has significance for policy makers across the world.

When the states themselves accept the fact that increasing private participation in health care in the form of health sector reforms is happening because of deliberate state policy, they will be better positioned to take decisions which ensure effective private sector regulation and universal access to quality health care within a democratic or participatory framework of governance.

Increasing privatisation of health care has also led toward citizens losing their democratic spaces with regard to decisions on universal access to quality health care. This has wider implications, not only for improved health status in general, but also about how we live in a modern society with our values of liberty, equality and justice intact.

The book would be a useful guide for policy-makers, researchers, students and layman across the world.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,Constantinos N. Phellas,Sociological Perspectives of Health and Illness,Hardback,978-1-4438-2548-1,44.99,"Medical sociology has evolved from being considered as an unimportant area of enquiry to being regarded as central to the study of private troubles and public issues. At present, much of what is deemed in sociology as exciting is advancing or contributing to the field of health. It is appropriate, therefore, that an edited text is published to specifically examine some of the important themes currently in medical sociology research and writing. This volume documents thinking, frameworks and processes that are actively shaping the medical sociology research of today. It covers a wide range of topics ranging from the morality of death and euthanasia to the conflict that exists between different status health care providers.

Sociological Perspectives of Health and Illness will be of interest to students across a wide range of courses in sociology and the social sciences. Specifically, students undertaking undergraduate and postgraduate courses in health studies, and health promotion would benefit by reading this textbook. However, professionals will also be attracted to the book due to the dissemination of current practises in health promotion issues and practices.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-03-01,Catalina Florina Florescu,Transacting Sites of the Liminal Bodily Spaces,Hardback,978-1-4438-2693-8,34.99,"This book focuses on liminal bodies and their delicate transaction with themselves and other people’s bodies. More specifically, it explores the spatiality and discourses of the body dying; the body opened in surgery, or through MRIs, CATs, and sometimes in autopsies; the body preserved through computerized images such as those created by the Visual Human Project; the metonymic body that continues to live in another body through organ replacement; and the bodily parts cast in silver, and then abandoned in a museum.

This study also analyzes the discourses of the contemporary body commissioned by the vast industry of mass-media. This type of body has started to direct itself toward frugal, almost furtive pleasures; consequently—unlike those seriously affected by illnesses—a body constantly guarded by fear eventually runs on empty, becomes a corps-déjà-vu, and thus moves toward different types of minimal and liminal topology. The primary works examined include memoirs (Marjorie Williams’s “Hit by Lightning: A Cancer Memoir,” Arthur W. Frank’s At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness, Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals), films (Alejandro Amenábar’s The Sea Inside, Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, Pedro Almodóvar’s All about My Mother), stories (Marisa Silver’s “Night Train to Frankfurt”), visual artworks (as accomplished by Jo Spence, David Wojnarowicz, Félix Gonzales-Torres, and Natalie Horne) and plays (Bryony Lavery’s Last Easter, Paula Vogel’s Baltimore Waltz, William Hoffman’s As Is), which are read comparatively, namely as works positioned at the intersection between literature/visual art and social diaries.

This book has become part of the collections of the world’s leading universities: Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, the Library of Congress, and more.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-04-01,Sue Barker,Midwives’ Emotional Care of Women becoming Mothers,Hardback,978-1-4438-2730-0,34.99,"This book offers an overview of the emotional care given by midwives to women based on the literature reviews and research undertaken by Sue Barker. Its chapters are mostly based around the questions she asked herself when exploring the area: What is motherhood? Who supports women at this time? What is emotional care? What are the experiences of midwives offering emotional care? What is emotion work? How does emotional care help women? She considers a wide range of literature sources to understand what is happening for the midwives and the women. Given the extensive use of referenced work the book should be useful for those thinking of undertaking a midwifery programme or those already engaged on any health care programmes. This book, though, is written with an easily accessible language so should be a useful source for voluntary groups and women on their journey to motherhood.

Midwifery care and motherhood are influenced by the culture within which they are experienced. This book has therefore considered the cultural hegemony and the differing ideologies within midwifery. The research was undertaken in the UK where most women receive midwifery care through the NHS therefore the midwives interviewed were all employed by the state. This may well have influenced their expectations and the women’s expectations of them. It may be that independent midwives would not have experienced some of the dilemmas faced by these midwives. Despite this the view of midwifery professional bodies, government guidance and research all support a ‘with woman’ approach to giving emotional support.

This book offers a detailed description of how emotional support as part of emotional care is given by midwives in their attempts to reduce or ameliorate emotional distress and provide comfort.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-01-01,"Laurence Monnais, C. Michele Thompson and Ayo Wahlberg",Southern Medicine for Southern People: Vietnamese Medicine in the Making,Hardback,978-1-4438-3497-1,44.99,"What is a national medicine? What does it mean for a medicine to be traditional and scientific at the same time? How could a specifically Vietnamese medicine emerge out of the medical practices and treatments that have flourished and waned during key socio-cultural encounters in Vietnam? This book answers these questions by examining the making of Vietnamese medicine from a historical and contemporary perspective. Ever since its fourteenth century emergence out of the traditions and practices of the much more globally celebrated Chinese medicine, Vietnamese medicine has been engaged in a constant effort to define, guard and more recently, revive itself. In this collection of empirically-rich chapters, international scholars specialising in history, sociology, anthropology and medicine show how this process has played out through very much ongoing North-South and West-East encounters. Vietnamese medicine is practiced, produced and consumed in contexts of medical pluralism and globalisation, not only within Vietnam, but increasingly also among the Vietnamese diaspora around the world. Its development and modernisation cannot be detached from Vietnam’s tumultuous and tragic quest for independence. The compass points that saturate every chapter in this volume suggest that the making of Vietnamese medicine has been as much related to post-colonial national identity formation as it has to national efforts to address the health problems of the Vietnamese people.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,Alvin Henry,Psychoanalysis in Context,Hardback,978-1-4438-3529-9,39.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,"Lisa Peterman, Kerry Sun and Frank W. Stahnisch","The Proceedings of the 18th Annual History of Medicine Days Conference 2009: The University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine, Alberta, Canada",Hardback,978-1-4438-3570-1,44.99,"This volume is the first one in a peer-reviewed series of Proceedings Volumes from the Calgary History of Medicine Days conferences, which are now produced with Cambridge Scholars Publishing. The History of Medicine Days are two-day Nation-wide conferences held annually in spring at the University of Calgary (Canada), where undergraduate and early graduate students from across Canada, the United States, United Kingdom and Europe give paper and poster presentations on a wide variety of topics from the history of medicine and health care. The selected 2009 conference papers that are assembled in this volume, particularly comprise the history of Ancient Medicine, Canadiana, Eugenics, Military Medicine, Public Health, Surgery, Diseases, as well as Sex and Gender perspectives. Distinguished Professor of Biology and Chair of the History of Biology Program at Washington University in St. Louis (USA), Dr. Garland E. Allen, held the 2009 keynote address at the conference. His topic “Evolution, Genetics and Eugenics: The Misuse of Biological Theory, 1900–1945” was largely based on an earlier article in the scholarly journal Endeavour. With the permission of the author and editors-in-chief of Endeavour, this article could be reprinted in the current volume where it represents the 2009 keynote address. This volume also includes the abstracts of all 2009 conference presentations and is well-illustrated with diagrams and images pertaining to the history of medicine.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing