Shifting Boundaries of Public Health: Europe in the Twentieth Century (Rochester Studies in Medical History) (Volume 12) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1580462839 ISBN 13: 9781580462839

Publisher: University of Rochester Press, 2008

Synopsis

European public health was a playing field for deeply contradictory impulses throughout the twentieth century. In the 1920s, international agencies were established with great fanfare and postwar optimism to serve as the watchtower of health the world over. Within less than a decade, local-level institutions began to emerge as seats of innovation, initiative, and expertise. But there was continual counterpressure from nation-states that jealously guarded their policymaking prerogatives in the face of the push for cross-national standardization and the emergence of original initiatives from below. In contrast to histories of twentieth-century public health that focus exclusively on the local, national, or international levels, Shifting Boundaries explores the connections or "zones of contact" between the three levels. The interpretive essays, written by distinguished historians of public health and medicine, focus on four topics: the oscillation between governmental and nongovernmental agencies as sites of responsibility for addressing public health problems; the harmonization of nation-states' agendas with those of international agencies; the development by public health experts of knowledge that is both placeless and respectful of place; and the transportability of model solutions across borders. The volume breaks new ground in its treatment of public health as a political endeavor by highlighting strategies to prevent or alleviate disease as a matter not simply of medical techniques but political values and commitments. Contributors: Peter Baldwin, Iris Borowy, James A. Gillespie, Graham Mooney, Lion Murard, Dorothy Porter, Sabine Schleiermacher, Susan Gross Solomon, Paul Weindling, and Patrick Zylberman. Susan Gross Solomon is professor of political science at the University of Toronto. Lion Murard and Patrick Zylberman are both senior researchers at CERMES (Centre de Recherche Médecine, Sciences, Santé et Société), CNRS-EHESS-INSERM, Paris.

About this title

About the Author:

Susan Gross Solomon is professor of political science at the University of Toronto. Lion Murard and Patrick Zylberman are both senior researchers at CERMES (Centre de Recherche Médecine, Sciences, Santé et Société), CNRS-EHESS-INSERM, Paris.

Review:

Combined with the thought-provoking introduction and the excellent quality of several papers, this makes the book a valuable contribution both to public health history, and to the history of "shifting boundaries" within other knowledge and policy fields. --MEDICAL HISTORY (Erik Ingebrigtsen) Menaced by AIDS, obesity, diabetes, resurgent malaria, and other plagues, global citizens live in an era of epidemiology. Shifting Boundaries of Public Health assembles some of the most revealing studies by leading historians of disease control to demonstrate how the politics of health has thrown all our spatial and ideological categories into flux. --Charles S. Maier, Saltonstall Professor of History, Harvard University A valuable contribution both to public health history, and to the history of "shifting boundaries" within other knowledge and policy fields. MEDICAL HISTORY, vol. 53, no. 4, October 2009

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Rochester Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1580462839
• ISBN 13: 9781580462839
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 346
• Editor: Gross Solomon Susan, Murard Lion, Zylberman Patrick, Solomon Susan Gross