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The Imperative of Health
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The Imperative of Health
Public Health and the Regulated Body

  • Deborah Lupton - University of New South Wales, Australia, UNSW Sydney, Australia


August 1995 | 192 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
"Overall, this is a fine scholarly work that brings together some very interesting and thought-provoking analyses. The book's strengths, namely its scholarly approach and critical thinking, well serve its audience of academics and students." --Doody's Health Sciences Book Review Journal "Deborah Lupton's complex treatise seeks to demonstrate that public health viewpoints and practices are value laden, political and socially subjective, and change over time and location. [This volume] is a good history of public health developments, primarily in Australia and England, and is a continuation of debate among health education professionals over the status of any and all health education 'truths.'. . . Lupton succeeds in her stated goal to 'problematize the taken-for-granted nature of health promotion discourses.'" --Choice In a scintillating reappraisal of public health and health promotion in contemporary societies, author Deborah Lupton shows that health cannot be understood simply as the presence or absence of disease but represents a moral imperative that is embedded in social and cultural norms and expressed in public policies. The Imperative of Health explores the areas of public health and health promotion using contemporary sociocultural and political theory and builds on Foucault's writings on subjectivity, embodiment, and power relations. Lupton analyzes the implications of the new social theories for the study of health promotion and health communication, combining sociological, anthropological, historical, and cultural studies approaches to analyze the subjective nature of public health practices, and exploring their underlying meanings and assumptions. Academics in public health, mass communication, medical sociology, and cultural studies will find this exploration concise, readable, and enlightening.

 
Governing the Masses
The Emergence of the Public Health Movement

 
 
Technologies of Health
Contemporary Health Promotion and Public Health

 
 
Taming Uncertainty
Risk Discourse and Diagnostic Testing

 
 
Communicating Health
The Mass Media and Advertising in Health Promotion

 
 
Bodies, Pleasures and the Practices of the Self

`This consideration of public health and health promotion is worth a read - certainly it is a valuable complement to the more established texts critiquing the practices of clinical medicine. The book considers many practices which are familiar features of everyday life, and I think it will be enjoyed by any reader with a general interest in health and society' - Public Understanding of Science

`Anyone in the public health industry who wants to stand back and ask fundamental questions about what they are doing and the way they are directly or indirectly affecting people at the personal level should read this book' - European Journal of Public Health

`A fine scholarly work that brings together some very interesting and thought-provoking analyses. The books strengths, namely its scholarly approach and critical thinking, well serve its audience of academics and students' - Doody's Health Science Book Review Journal

`A good history of public health developments, primarily in Australia and England, the book is a continuation of debate among health education profession over the status of any or all health education "truths"' - Choice

`An important contribution to the educational critique of public health programs' - Social History of Medicine

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ISBN: 9781446238080

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ISBN: 9780803979352
$213.00

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ISBN: 9780803979369
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