Description:
Giving Blood represents a new agenda for blood donation research. It explores the diverse historical and contemporary undercurrents that shape how blood donation takes place, and the social meanings that people attribute to the act of giving blood. Organised in three parts, the book's chapters turn our attention to key political factors that have shaped blood collection and transfusion practices worldwide.
Review Quotes:
This volume follows nicely upon Kieran Healy's work, which focused on the differing organizational contexts of blood donation across Europe and the impact of them on the numbers and variety of blood donors obtained. It goes beyond his work to investigate blood donation systems in a wide range of countries, both developed and developing. In the concluding chapter, the editors do an excellent job of extracting common themes and issues from the extremely varied presentations across the chapters. I would recommend this book to organizational and cultural sociologists, as well as political scientists and students of public health.
--Professor Jane Allyn Piliavin, Conway-Bascom Professor Emerita of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison