Parution – Against health : How health became the new morality

Parution - Against health : How health became the new morality



Jonathan M. Metzl and Anna Kirkland (eds), Against health : How health became the new morality,
 New York, NYU Press, 2010.

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, and that disparities in
the incidence and prevalence of disease are closely linked to disparities in
income and social support.  The book's stand against health is not a stand
against the authenticity of people's attempts to ward off suffering. Against
Health instead claims that individual strivings for health are, in some
instances, rendered more difficult by the ways in which health is culturally
configured and socially sustained. The authors unpack the divergent cultural
meanings of health and explore the ideologies involved in its construction,
presenting strategies for moving forward and developing deeper, more
productive, and indeed healthier interactions about our bodies.




Introduction: Why Against Health?, Jonathan M. Metzl, University of Michigan

http://www.nyupress.org/webchapters/metzl_intro.pdf

WHAT IS HEALTH, ANYWAY?
What is Health and How Do You Get It? Richard Klein, Cornell University
Risky Bigness: On Obesity, Eating, And The Ambiguity Of Health. Lauren
Berlant, University of Chicago
Against Global Health? Arbitrating Science, Non-Science, and Nonsense
through Health. Vincanne Adams, University of California, San Francisco

SEEING HEALTH THROUGH MORALITY
The Social Immorality of Health in the Gene Age: Race, Disability, and
Inequality. Dorothy Roberts, Northwestern University
Fat Panic and the Invisible Morality. Kathleen LeBesco, Marymount
Manhattan College
Against Breastfeeding (Sometimes). Joan Wolf, Texas A&M University

MAKING HEALTH AND DISEASE
Pharmaceutical Propaganda. Carl Elliott, University of Minnesota
The Strangely Passive-Aggressive History of Passive-Aggressive Disorder.
Christopher Lane, Northwestern University
Obsession: Against Mental Health. Lennard Davis, University of Illinois
at Chicago
Atomic Health, or How Nuclear Terror Shaped American Notions of Death.
Joseph Masco, University of Chicago

PLEASURE AND PAIN AFTER HEALTH
How Much Sex is Healthy?: The Pleasures of Asexuality. Eunjung Kim,
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Be Prepared. S. Lochlan Jain, Stanford University
In the Name of Pain. Tobin Siebers, University of Michigan

Conclusion: What Next?, Anna Kirkland, University of Michigan

Jonathan M. Metzl (jmetzl@umich.edu) is Associate Professor of Womens
Studies Department
and 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 (akirklan@umich.edu) is Associate Professor of Womens
Studies and Political
Science at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Fat Rights:
Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood.

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