Medicine as Culture: Illness, Disease and the Body in Western Societies

Lupton, who is not further identified, investigates why medicine is characterized by such strong paradoxes in western societies and why issues of health and illness are surrounded with controversy, conflict, and emotion. She draws largely from medical sociology, the sociology of health and illness, the history of medicine, and medical anthropology but also borrows insights from feminism, cultural studies, and discourse analysis. The first edition was published in 1994 and has been reprinted nearly every year since. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR