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Putting Health into Place draws together original works that collectively argue for a reinvention of medical geography. There is a growing interest worldwide in relationships between human health and the experience of place, an interest driven both by developments in sociocultural theory and observed health concerns. This book is a resource for those wishing to explore or to teach beyond the frontiers of conventional medical geography. As the first word of the book's title suggests, this is an active volume, one that contributes to situating health in the simultaneously tangible, negotiated, and experienced realities of place. Robin A. Kearns and Wilbert M. Gesler argue that medical issues are a necessary but insufficient focus in developing geographies of health and healing. This contention is supported by the authors of the thirteen substantive chapters who convey research findings from the Americas, Britain, and the Pacific. This book represents a collective commitment to exploring links between social and cultural theory, ideas about place, and discourses on health that will be of interest to readers across the social and health sciences.
Approaches to Human Geography is the essential student primer on theory and practice in Human Geography. It is a systematic review of the key ideas and debates informing post-war geography, explaining how those ideas work in practice. Avoiding jargon - while attentive to the rigor and complexity of the ideas that underlie geographic knowledge – the text is written for students who have not met philosophical or theoretical approaches before. This is a beginning guide to geographic research and practice.
Over the past two decades, rates of adult and childhood obesity in the developed world have risen sharply. By the year 2000, 65% of the United States population were overweight, 30% of these obese. Whilst medical treatment has tended to focus on individual habits of diet and exercise, this approach does little to account for globally increasing levels of obesity, and the external, environmental factors that may be responsible. This in-depth study assembles the evidence for a geographical explanation of current obesity trends, and is the first work to examine the ways in which environment and living conditions promote an imbalance of energy intake over energy expenditure. The book calls upon the expertise of geographers, nutritionists, epidemiologists, sociologists and public health researchers, resulting in a broad, multidisciplinary analysis of this important health issue. Cover graphic designed by Georgia Witten-Sage.
While interest in the relations of power and identity in food explodes, a hesitancy remains about calling these racial. What difference does race make in the fields where food is grown, the places it is sold and the manner in which it is eaten? How do we understand farming and provisioning, tasting and picking, eating and being eaten, hunger and gardening better by paying attention to race? This collection argues there is an unacknowledged racial dimension to the production and consumption of food under globalization. Building on case studies from across the world, it advances the conceptualization of race by emphasizing embodiment, circulation and materiality, while adding to food advocacy ...
"The book covers some of the (traditionally) most obtuse and difficult-to-grasp philosophical ideas that have influenced geographers/geography. The fact that these are presented in an inclusive and accessible manner is a key strength. Many students have commented that the chapters they have read have encouraged them to read more in this field, which is fantastic from a lecturer′s perspective." - Richard White, Sheffield Hallam University A new edition of the classic Approaches text for students, organised in three sections, which overviews and explains the history and philosophy of Human Geographies in all its applications by those who practise it: Section One – Philosophies: Positivist ...
The therapeutic landscape concept, first introduced early in the 1990s, has been widely employed in health/medical geography and gaining momentum in various health-related disciplines. This is the first book published in several years, and provides an introduction to the concept and its applications. Written by health/medical geographers and anthropologists, it addresses contemporary applications in the natural and built environments; for special populations, such as substance abusers; and in health care sites, a new and evolving area - and provides an array of critiques or contestations of the concept and its various applications. The conclusion of the work provides a critical evaluation of the development and progress of the concept to date, signposting the likely avenues for future investigation.
The geographies of health and development is an emerging sub-discipline, tying in with many of the conceptual, theoretical and practical components of other disciplines working in health, health care, economics, and international development. Spatially and theoretically grounded in geography, this collection offers a fresh perspective on the dialectic relationships between health and development. Health problems in a developing context take on much higher rates of prevalence as a result of the varied cultural, structural and economic vulnerabilities of the people they impact. This book begins by exploring some of the circumstances surrounding the distinctive health inequities currently facin...
Drawing on recent academic studies in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, this book is the first international text on homelessness in rural areas. Consisting of fifteen specially commissioned chapters, International Perspectives on Rural Homelessness provides comparative material on the cultural, political and policy contexts of rural homelessness, examining the nature and scale of the issue and the complex local geographies of rural homelessness.
This book provides the first foundation of knowledge about the intellectual traditions, contemporary scope and future prospects for the interdisciplinary field of rural gerontology. With a focus on rural regions, small towns and villages, which have the highest rates of population ageing worldwide, Rural Gerontology is aimed at understanding what it means for rural people, communities and institutions to be at the forefront of twenty-first-century demographic change. The book offers important insights from rural ageing studies into today’s most pressing gerontological problems. With chapters from more than 65 established and emerging rural ageing researchers, it is the first synthesis of k...
Well-being is now firmly established as an overarching theme of key concern to all professionals that work, manage or design the environment. However, well-being is a complex multi-dimensional issue rooted in the ways that we encounter, perceive and interpret the environment. No single discipline can claim to have sufficient knowledge to fully explain the types of interactions that occur, therefore there is a need to draw together a wide range of professions who are exploring the consequences of their actions upon the well-being of individuals and communities. This edited work addresses the above, consisting of a collection of studies which embrace different aspects of environment, landscape...