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Building on our reputation for publishing high quality student textbooks, and cutting-edge work by leading authors, we are pleased to announce a major new list of titles in health and social care. These are suitable for use by students of nursing, midwifery, medicine and all the allied health professions.
Following in the Polity tradition, the books will not only present a critical approach, but will also provide exceptionally engaging introductions to the core themes in each area.
Louise Warwick-Booth et al
: Contemporary Health Studies
Contemporary Health Studies: An Introduction provides a lively and accessible introduction to the current issues and key debates in this area. It contains a strong, up-to-date, global, social-scientific focus examining the human experience of health particularly emphasizing its social, political and environmental dimensions.
Anita Fatchett: Social Policy for Nurses
"As nursing and the NHS go through turbulent times, this book gives us the social policy context to remind us where we have come from, and assess what the future might hold."
James Buchan, Queen Mary University
Andy Alaszewski & Patrick Brown
: Making Health Policy
"This introductory text offers a novel approach to health policy making, challenging the conception of policy as a rational process. Written in an accessible style it is essential reading for undergraduate students of health policy."
Jonathan Gabe, Royal Holloway, University of London
Nick J. Fox
: The Body
The medical and social sciences offer us many ways of understanding the human body and what it can do. From biology and psychology to sociology and philosophy, a range of disciplines supply us with a rich yet challenging picture. On the one hand, our bodies are fashioned from genes, cells and organs; on the other, they are the foundation for our identities, our interactions and lived experiences from childhood to old age.
Joan Busfield: Mental Illness
"The relabelling of human distress and eccentricity as mental disorder is one of the great social changes of our time. Joan Busfield provides a breathtakingly lucid and remarkably comprehensive analysis of the vast cross-disciplinary terrain of argument about mental disorder and the meaning of the enormous expansion in disorder diagnoses over the past half-century. Busfield brings not only her sociologist's accomplished eye but also her trained clinician's understanding and a deft wielding of conceptual distinctions to the multifaceted debates over the meaning and social impact of mental disorder."
Jerome C. Wakefield, Professor of Social Work and Psychiatry, New York University
Denny and Earle: Sociology for Nurses 2nd Edition
"This new edition continues to have an accessible style much needed by those students of health care new to sociology. The selected topics are tackled from a practitioner’s perspective, with questions at the end of each chapter to help explore and apply the material in more detail. A new chapter tackling the impact of globalization is welcomed. This is an ideal textbook for students of all branches of nursing and midwifery, particularly in the early years, or for those revisiting the underpinning disciplines supporting nursing practice. A relevant, enjoyable read supported by good references and recommendations for further reading."
Jane Alderton, University of Brighton
Please visit the accompanying website at: www.politybooks.com/sociologyfornurses
Hammick, Freeth, Goodsman and Copperman: Being Interprofessional
Working interprofessionally is an essential part of successful twenty-first-century care provision. This engaging, easy-to-follow text highlights the need for collaboration between practitioners from all branches of health and social care: an indispensable guide to working better together that shows what being interprofessional really means.
Blaxter: Health 2nd Edition
The second edition of Mildred Blaxter's highly respected book offers a comprehensive and engaging introduction to the key debates surrounding the concept of health today. It will be is an invaluable textbook for students of medicine and other health professions as well as those studying sociology, health sciences and health promotion.
Barnes and Mercer: Exploring Disability 2nd Edition
"If students and teachers want one resource to assist in their exploration of disability studies, then this is it. It’s up-to-date, comprehensive and coherent, outlining the key themes and issues in a readable way. No-one studying disability on an undergraduate, postgraduate or professional training course should be without it."
Mike Oliver, Emeritus Professor, University of Greenwich
Hubley and Copeman: Practical Health Promotion
Highly commended in the BMA Awards 'Public Health' category
"This book brings together, in a very clear and accessible form, the theory and practice of health promotion. It demystifies the subject and brings it within the reach of everybody. This is one of the best books of its kind currently available, and I would heartily recommend it to students."
Anne Charlton, University of Manchester
Nettleton: Sociology of Health and Illness 2nd Edition
"Sarah Nettleton’s Sociology of Health and Illness has become a major text for students studying medical sociology. This second edition is a welcome event ... Its up-to-date treatment of changes in research and health care is essential reading for those attempting to understand matters medical in today’s fast changing environment."
Mike Bury, University of London
Payne: The Health of Men and Women
"This book clearly reviews similarities and differences in women and men’s physical and mental health as shaped by both gender and sex-linked biology, and also varying by outcome and by age, class, race/ethnicity, sexuality and global region. Refreshingly resisting misleading simplifications, Sarah Payne encourages critical thinking about gender, biology and population health."
Nancy Krieger, Harvard School of Public Health
Bury: Health and Illness
"Written in an engaging and accessible style, Health and Illness is outstanding, carefully addressing key classic and contemporary debates within the sociology of health and illness, and illustrating these with the most up-to-date research."
Sara Arber, University of Surrey
Bartley: Health Inequality
"This book makes an original and major contribution to the body of knowledge on the complex theories of inequalities in health. It is well written and explained in simple terms that encourage the reader to evaluate the original research for themselves."
Australian Social Work
Venkatapurum: Health Justice
"Health Justice is a hugely important contribution to practical reason and to public policy. It presents an illuminating investigation of why the capability to be healthy is central to social justice, and identifies what can be done here and now to pursue that much neglected philosophical perspective."
Amartya Sen, Harvard University
Green: Understanding the Life Course
"Lorraine Green has produced an impressive and stimulating text. She rigorously shakes some of the lazy orthodoxies which can settle into our understandings of the human life course, yet the work remains accessible and relevant to both professionals and researchers who seek to understand this important domain."
Sue White, Professor of Social Work, Lancaster University
Leach: Child Care Today
"The renowned psychologist and child specialist Dr Penelope Leach has, after seven years of painstaking research, published a new work, Childcare Today. Its conclusions that good child-care won't damage children could mean a guilt-free return to work for many ex-yummy-mummies, and will come as a blessing to mothers already working."
The Times
Bendelow: Health, Emotion and the Body
Health, Emotion and the Body combines clarity of expression with careful scholarship and originality, making it appeal to students and scholars with a wide range of interests, including the sociology of health and illness, the body, and mental illness, as well as health psychology.
G. Cockerham and W. Cockerham: Health and Globalization
This accessible book examines the multidimensional influence of globalization on human health and disease. Globalization has had numerous far-reaching impacts on health-related issues, both social and political, and as this book shows, continues to present both positive and negative implications for the state of human health.
Cockerham: Social Causes of Health & Disease
"Social Causes of Health and Disease will be an extremely useful tool for teachers of medical sociology and others looking for an introduction to the subject that is both scholarly and accessible. Particularly noteworthy and exciting is Cockerham’s health lifestyles model, with his square focus on socioeconomic conditions and other social factors as causes of human health and illness, and his cutting-edge treatment of the interplay of structure and agency in this process. Also extremely valuable is his thoughtful placement of medical sociology in the history of American and British sociology."
Jo C. Phelan, Columbia University
Stefan Elbe: Security and Global Health
"Every now and then a new book comes along that challenges us to think more deeply about an issue, to consider more carefully the choices we make and their impact. This book is just such a book. With this new work on the medicalization of security, Elbe has once again produced an insightful piece of work that will no doubt prove a reference point for policy-makers, academics, practitioners, and students, for years to come."
Adam Kamradt-Scott, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Davies: Global Politics of Health
"Health is now a political issue on a global scale. Sara Davies' excellent book allows us to understand the tensions created by this development and is essential reading for students and scholars of International Relations."
Colin Innes, Director of Centre for Health and International Relations, Aberystwyth University
Sparks and Villagran: Patient and Provider Interaction
"The most thorough and compelling compilation and discussion of patient-provider interaction theory and research to date. Written in a manner that clearly explicates, yet similtaneously provides thought-provoking heurism. A rare volume that wonderfully serves as an advanced text and research resource."
Bryan B. Whaley, University of San Francisco
Barnes and Mercer: Disability
"This book is essential reading for all disability studies scholars. It is historically well-grounded and theoretically rigorous, carefully exploring theories of disability, impairment and the body. The nature of the social oppression experienced by disabled people is analysed, and disability is located in relation to gender, 'race' and social class. Like all good sociology, the book is highly accessible and an excellent read."
Sheila Riddell, University of Glasgow
Phillips: Care
"Phillips's book takes a fresh look at the much debated and researched concept of care. The author not only reviews current thinking on the subject and what has shaped that thinking but also provides some interesting new perspectives, illustrated through a range of real life situations and case studies. This is a very useful guide to a complex and much discussed topic. It will be an important resource for students and teachers who are looking for new ways forward on the subject of care."
Julia Johnson, Open University
