Description: Why are some types of societies more successful than others at promoting individual and collective well-being? Focusing on population health as an indicator of social success, this book opens up new perspectives on the ways in which social relations condition health and the public policies that address it. Based on four years of dialogue among scholars from diverse disciplines, it offers social epidemiologists broader views of the social determinants of health and social scientists a sense of the fascinating puzzles of population health. The chapters consider health inequalities in the developing, as well as developed, world. They locate their roots, not only in economic resources, but in the social resources provided by the institutions and cultural repertoires constitutive of social relations. They examine the AIDS epidemic in Africa, the sources of the health gradient, the role of collective imaginaries, destigmatization strategies, and the historical basis for effective health policies.
Brief description: Peter A. Hall is Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies at Harvard University and Co-Director of the Successful Societies Program for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. He is the author of Governing the Economy (1986) and more than seventy articles in comparative political economy. He is an editor of many books, including Changing France: The Politics that Markets Make (2006), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (2001), and The Political Power of Economic Ideas (1989).
Review Quotes: "Scholars have long known that purely materialist accounts cannot explain the steep health gradients we observe within and across societies. This provocative collection of essays forcefully offers an alternative perspective exhorting us to consider how culture, institutions, social networks and other intangible aspects of status (and development) get under our skin - literally - to affect population health. Imagine Amartya Sen meets Erving Goffman..." - Dalton Conley, New York University