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THE SOCIOLOGY OF HEALTH AND ILLNESS: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES, NINTH EDITION Peter Conrad and Valerie Leiter, Editors New York, NY: Worth, 2013, 640 pp., $94.99 (softcover edition)
The United States has been unmatched, or nearly so, in total spending per person on health care, according to rankings within the past 5 years by sources such as the World Health Organization (WHO, 2015). From this, one might assume that Americans enjoy better health than citizens of other countries. Not only is this not the case but also the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found in 2014 that the United States paradoxically had some of the worst health outcomes among the OECD's 34 industrialized member nations.
Concern with this situation drives the ninth edition of The Sociology of Health & Illness: Critical Perspectives (2013), whose editors, eminent medical sociologist Peter Conrad and new coeditor Valerie Leiter, starkly state that "American health care is in a state of crisis" (p. 2). The elements of this crisis include rising costs; unequal access to care; decreased availability and quality of primary care medicine; prioritization of symptoms over cures, treatment over prevention; inadequate public accountability in medicine; and the power of health care providers and industries over patients (pp. 2-3). This substantial volume is an invaluable contribution for its erudite engagement with the behemoth subjects of health, illness, and health care in the United States and their troubled state.
Pedagogically, the collection's 49 articles and chapters are intended to "help students better understand issues underlying our health care dilemmas and to promote an informed discussion on the potential changes in health and health care" (p. ix) today. (More than 40% of the selections are new to this edition.) Consistent with this intent, most of the contributions are written in accessible language that avoids disciplinary jargon and overt theorizing. The book is also structured for clarity; it is organized into four parts, with each further subdivided into thematic sections (each part and section is prefaced by an editors' introduction).
Beyond this, the collection's longer term goal is to contribute toward improving health throughout American society. And this, of course, would require reforming its health care system. A bigger part of the book's value, however, stems from its sociologically informed perspective, which...