In Preventing Dementia? Editors Annette Leibing and Silke Schicktanz take what they call the ‘new dementia’, and the emergent prevention paradigm surrounding it, as the focus for a collection of critical contributions from across the social sciences. What's striking about the book is the way its empirical case pushes social scientists to think beyond familiar arguments about medicalisation, brain‐centeredness

Over the last three decades, sociomaterial approaches to the study of health care practices have made an important contribution to the sociology of health care. Significant attention has been paid to the role of technology and artefacts in health care and the operation of actor‐networks but less space has been given to questions of ontological multiplicity in health care practices. In this paper, we

The term ‘cyborg’, a portmanteau word coined by Clynes and Kline in 1960 to describe the cybernetic adaptations necessary to enable organisms to live in space, has since come to refer to any being that is part organism, part machine – a definition that would certainly apply to individuals with implanted cardiac devices. Resilient Cyborgs: Living and Dying with Pacemakers and Defibrillators, by Nelly

Digital technologies are increasingly embedded in clinical encounters, reconfiguring the basis on which health care is delivered. Thereby, the delivery of care shifts from territorial locations in clinics and temporal modes of co‐presence towards digital platforms. Drawing on a sociotechnical evaluation of digitised patient follow‐up in HIV care, this paper argues that the forms of interactivity practised

Technology development is gathering pace in epilepsy with seizure detection devices promising to transform self‐care and service provision. However, such accounts often neglect the uncertainties, displacements and responsibilities that technology‐supported care generates. This review brings together a heterogeneous literature, identified through systematic searches in 8 databases and snowball searching

An ethnographic study of health and wellbeing was undertaken in a deprived urban neighbourhood in the UK Midlands. Drawing on Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, capital and field, we discerned three different, even conflicting, ways of understanding and acting on health: (i) older adults discussed their wellbeing in relation to the local context or field, walking the dog, helping at the community centre

Do wage‐setting institutions, such as collective bargaining, improve health and, if so, is this because they reduce income inequality? Wage‐setting institutions are often assumed to improve health because they increase earnings and reduce inequality and yet, while individual‐level studies suggest higher earnings improve well being, the direct effects of these institutions on mortality remains unclear

Global discourses have advocated women's empowerment as a means to reduce their own's food insecurity, which is also key development challenges in Bangladesh. However, little empirical research has conducted on this issue, especially in the rural area of Bangladesh. Therefore, the present study was conducted to examine the relationship of six domains of women's empowerment with their food security

Adherence to medicines tends to be envisaged as a matter of actors’ reasoned actions, though there is increasing emphasis on situating adherence as a practice materialised in everyday routines. Drawing on the qualitative interview accounts of Black African women living with HIV in London, UK, we treat adherence to HIV medicines as not only situated in the practices of the immediate and everyday but

Cannabis use by women has been under‐researched, particularly use by marginalized women in developing societies. This article draws on qualitative research in Uyo, Nigeria, to explore how intersecting stigmas around social identity categories (e.g. gender, sex work) shapes cannabis use and contributes to health harms for marginalized women. Qualitative data were collected via in‐depth interviews with

One topic that has been brought to the forefront of public attention as a result of the COVID‐19 crisis is the clinical trials process. Questions are being raised regarding participant recruitment and selection, ensuring adequate numbers of racial and ethnic minority participants, developing best practices for conducting clinical trials, and achieving valid and reliable results under time and resource

This beautifully documented book was written in response to the House Joint Committee on Human Rights 2006‐2007 call for a better understanding of hospital culture and its consequences. Its focus is on how things are actually done in hospital wards and with what impact. Eight chapters develop this theme. We are introduced to the concept of cultures of care and ward life; we are helped to see ‘invisibilities’

Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia alter an individual’s capacity to remember and interpret information about their environment, affecting their ability to continue caring for their needs, safety and wellbeing. We have a valuable lesson to learn from those with Alzheimer’s. It reminds us that, despite dominant cultural values of autonomy and independence, we are all mutually dependent on each

Men account for approximately 75% of the one million annual suicide deaths worldwide. Emerging research indicates a link between suicide and men's active pursuit of hegemonic masculinity via emotional restriction. However, little is known of the continuum of suicidal men's emotional practice, and particularly how men mobilise emotions to actively pursue or resist hegemonic masculine ideals. This theorised

This book addresses the social construction of endometriosis. Ground‐breaking ethnographic research, carried out between 2013 and 2014 in the UK by physician and anthropologist Véronique Griffith, reopens the historical gender issues surrounding the female body and its 'singularly feminine' diseases. In frank and provocative questioning, the author asks profound questions about the ordeal women are

Nationwide rollout of antiretroviral treatment (ART) is increasing the number of older persons living with HIV (OPLWH) in South Africa. Yet, little is known about how the sociological aspects of ageing – stigma, finances and family dynamics – impact access to ART. Qualitative interviews with 23 persons aged 50‐plus living near Cape Town highlight the barriers and facilitators to the acceptability,

In challenging the ‘validity’ of the body mass index (BMI), the construct of metabolic syndrome has been used to comprehend how obesity affects Japanese people. This article is grounded in an adaptation of the ‘sexual scripting theory’ (Gagnon and Simon, 2005) and proposes the concept of ‘ethno‐essentialisms of the self’ to explore the cultural scripts underpinning the development of metabolic syndrome

Waiting time in hospitals is often studied from one of two perspectives: a distributed resource in hospitals or a potential steering and measuring factor. In this article, waiting time in an emergency department is examined from a practice and a narrative perspective, placing time at the core of our analysis. Our article explores patient waiting time as a local practice that builds on the temporal

Mobile health (mHealth) technologies for HIV care are developed to provide diagnostic support, health education, risk assessment and self‐monitoring. They aim to either improve or replace part of the therapeutic relationship. Part of the therapeutic relationship is affective, with the emergence of feelings and emotion, yet little research on mHealth for HIV care focuses on affect and HIV testing practices

Over the past decade, there has been widespread concern about environmental contamination linked to an emerging class of compounds known as PFAS [Poly‐ and per‐fluorinated alkyl substances]. PFAS contamination has been found in drinking water across the United States. Despite the increased interest within the scientific community, little research has been conducted on community environmental health

Food is one of the key themes in public health policy and debates over inequalities in health. In this article, we argue that more research is needed to understand how socioeconomic disadvantage is translated into low degrees of healthiness. We suggest that everyday life analysis may be sharpened by way of drawing upon a practice‐theoretical perspective on the mundane processes involved in this translation

Young people's drinking has declined markedly in Australia over the past 15 years, and this may be linked to changing norms and values around health. We take the view that healthism—a discourse that privileges good health and renders people personally responsible for managing health—has become pervasive, creating new pressures influencing young people's alcohol practices. Through interviews with 50

This qualitative study focuses on self‐medication with antibiotics as it relates to gender roles and traditions in the Arab society in Israel, a collectivist minority with defined traditional gender norms. Its findings draw on the analysis of 116 face‐to‐face interviews with 60 pharmacists, 27 primary care physicians and 29 community members, mainly mothers and unmarried women, from different geographical

For persons with a long‐term illness or impairment, return‐to‐work decisions involve considerations about work capacity, opportunities in the labour market, the impact of injuries, further treatment requirements, physical and cognitive rehabilitation, and mental health recovery. These considerations are undertaken by the affected individuals as well as by professionals in health care and employment

To understand the complexities of managing long‐term conditions and develop appropriate responses, micro‐, meso‐ and macrolevels must be considered. However, these levels have not been combined in a single analytical framework of long‐term condition management (LTCM). This article aims to describe a framework of LTCM practice and research that combines societal levels and key agents. The actor‐level

Although patients who undergo weight‐loss surgery (WLS/bariatric surgery) must follow severe eating restrictions in a manner similar to that of dieting, professionals strive to demarcate distinctions between the approaches and methods of WLS and diet. Drawing from ethnographic research, this study focuses on the content and interpretative dimensions of professionals' boundary work as well as its meaning

Emergent biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease (AD) are expected to provide earlier and more precise diagnoses. However, even if biomarkers live up to these expectations, it cannot be taken for granted that patients actually would value an earlier and more precise AD diagnosis. Based on an interview study, we aim to give more insight into the value of an AD diagnosis for patients, in existing as well

Government policy in the UK emphasises that people with intellectual disabilities should have the opportunity to make choices and exert control over their own lives as much as possible. The ability of a person to resist activities and offers is therefore important, particularly for people with severe and profound intellectual disabilities, who are likely to have language impairments and need to communicate

Growing concerns about “online harm” and “duty of care” fuel debate about how best to regulate and moderate “troubling content” on social media. This has become a pressing issue in relation to the potential application of media guidelines to online discussion of death by suicide—discussion which is troubling because it is often transgressive and contested. Drawing on an innovative mixed‐method analysis

Health risk behaviours such as tobacco smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, drug use, unhealthy diet and unprotected sexual intercourse contribute to the global burden of non‐communicable diseases and are often initiated in adolescence. An individualistic focus on ‘health risk behaviours’ has resulted in behaviour change strategies that are potentially ineffective and increase inequalities. We conducted

The decommissioning of a health‐care service is invariably a highly complex and contentious process which faces many implementation challenges. There has been little specific theorisation of this phenomena, although insights can be transferred from wider literatures on policy implementation and change processes. In this paper, we present findings from empirical case studies of three decommissioning

Alongside other Nordic countries, the Norwegian government has introduced Cancer Patient Pathways (CPPs) for faster diagnostic assessment and timely treatment to improve the quality of cancer care. A key aspect of CPPs is the introduction of time limits for each phase of the diagnostic investigation. Occurring simultaneously are ongoing advances in medical technology, complicating the process of diagnosing

Large‐scale international migration continues apace. From a health‐care services perspective, it is important to understand the influence of migrant heritage on utilization, to allocate resources appropriately and facilitate equity. However, the differences in utilization across different migrant groups remain poorly understood, particularly so for paediatric populations. This paper contributes to

What happens when a friend starts talking about her own substance use and misuse? This article provides the first investigation of how substance use is spontaneously topicalized in naturally occurring conversation. It presents a detailed analysis of a rare video‐recorded interaction showing American English‐speaking university students talking about their own substance (mis)use in a residential setting

Antimicrobial resistance control programmes often aim to “fix” the behaviour of antibiotic users and prescribers. Such behavioural interventions have been widely criticised in social science literature for being inefficient and too narrow in scope. Drawing on these criticisms, this article analyses how political programmes for fixing antibiotic behaviours were adapted into the practices of health‐care

A metal duckbill speculum, the tool commonly used for vaginal examination, confronts us on the cover of Feeling Medicine: How the Pelvic Exam Shapes Medical Training. The speculum, traditionally seen as an instrument of clinical authority and patient passivity, is put to work by Kelly Underman within this examination of ‘emotional socialization in medical education’ (p. 203). In six chapters, Underman

This excellent book draws on feminist thinking to trouble traditional understandings of mental health and mental ill health as bio‐psycho‐social constructs, to open up radically transformative possibilities. Rooted in original interviews undertaken with 80 diverse Australian women about their experiences of depression and recovery. It draws on a vast array of theoretical material to make its arguments

‘The stories I tell in this book are about the people, the institutions, the ideas, the policies, and the knowledge that, when assembled, make up the Mexican AR system. But these stories are also about Mexico, about its government, its inhabitants, and their stories’ (p. 15). A Portrait of Assisted Reproduction in Mexico offers a multi‐faceted history of the assisted reproduction (AR) system in Mexico

This article examines narratives about promiscuity that are emphasized by some gay and bisexual men who are themselves living with HIV. We used semi‐structured interviews to assess the processes, outcomes, and meanings of HIV diagnosis among 10 young gay and bisexual men aged between 18 and 30 years old. Interviews were conducted in health service settings for the diagnosis and treatment of HIV and

For children with type 1 diabetes, the period of adolescence is associated with higher blood glucose levels and increased psychological distress compared to other age groups. Focusing on pre‐teens (9‐12 years) with type 1 diabetes and their families has been suggested as key to understanding and reducing these challenges. The aim of this study was to explore: 1, how diabetes affects family life, 2

In Deadly Biocultures: The Ethics of Life‐Making (2019), Nadine Ehlers and Shiloh Krupar lead readers through an elegant and illuminating disassembling of the power and knowledge regimes that structure contemporary life in the United States. The authors’ clear explanation of Foucault’s theories and tangible real‐world examples makes this critical analysis of life under neoliberalism accessible to readers

Although public debates on cannabis are ongoing in many countries, there are currently no EU‐wide rules for either medical or recreational use of cannabis. Numerous studies have illustrated that creating such rules is a complex challenge. The battle over the legalisation of medical use of cannabis in Poland is a good example for analysing the mutual impact of the social practices that various actors

Community pharmacy faces ongoing challenges to its economic and social standing. A concern to legitimate professional status explains the attraction of public health. Interventions currently advocated by UK State‐sponsored health care seek to reconcile the autonomous ‘entrepreneurial’ patient with market‐driven solutions. Engaging critically with recent Foucauldian sociological work on pharmacy as

It is now established that people living with HIV who have an undetectable viral load and adhere to antiretroviral treatment cannot transmit HIV to their sexual partners. Previous research has shown that ‘being undetectable’ changes how HIV‐positive gay men experience their sex lives. But how does it affect gay men’s reproductive behaviours? And what influence does it have on views about parenthood

Community health care workers (CHWs), lay community members with basic health care training, have been charged with providing appropriate care for vulnerable populations, addressing social determinants and improving population health. Frequently, CHWs lack the economic or cultural capital to accomplish these goals. Through analysis of 17 semi‐structured interviews with CHWs and supervisors at a CHW

Cyborg Mind is a comprehensive and authoritative book that discusses ethical and anthropological questions. It addresses key ethical and anthropological questions, challenges and implications that have arisen with respect to neuronal interface systems in both medical and nonmedical contexts. Furthermore, it addresses social, legal and philosophical implications of the use of new brain–computer interface

The passage of the US Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act in 2009 and the financial incentives provided by the Meaningful Use (MU) program stimulated healthcare providers in the United States to adopt electronic health records (EHRs). The digital turn that followed changed dramatically and unexpectedly the organisation and delivery of health services. Drawing

In the wake of the COVID‐19 pandemic and mass lockdowns that continue to shake the world, sociologists of health and illness have been advised to undertake research only when the time feels right and to avoid premature evaluation. Such advice makes sense, especially amidst an epidemic of interpretation that has resulted in substandard work. However, this contribution argues that when trying to understand

For wider audiences in the Global North, beauty pageants have mostly lost their appeal and are often made fun of. If taken seriously, they are reproached for being misogynistic, both objectifying women’s bodies and celebrating unrealistic beauty standards. In other parts of the world, however, beauty pageants are a popular, growing industry. This is the case for the Nigerian beauty pageant industry

The worldwide COVID‐19 crisis has highlighted perhaps more than ever before in the history of SHI the need for a critical sociological lens alongside the clinical, public health and organisational discussion of the current pandemic as it continues through 2020. In particular, debates around social inequalities in health and medicine have received new attention globally. A research note by one of us

Introduction If the global HIV pandemic and more localised outbreaks of SARS, Ebola and the Zika virus, among others, did not convince us that infectious diseases have been far from conquered, then COVID‐19 must certainly have done so. In the past few months, questions about the global coronavirus pandemic – its cause, distribution, health and social impacts, and how best to limit its reach through

In 2013, we wrote a Sociology of Health & Illness article as part of a special issue on ‘Pandemics and Emerging Infectious Diseases.’ We focused on the first U.S. occurrence of West Nile Virus (WNV) – the 1999 outbreak in New York City – and used the disease as a case study in the creation of Public Health Emergencies by governments, to understand both their immediate effects and long‐term consequences

Introduction This commentary examines the intrinsic social dilemmas that present themselves in the face of pandemics and pandemic planning that are often highlighted through differential patterns of risk across a population. Specifically, we focus on the invisibility of what has become an essential labour force in many healthcare systems around the globe – personal support workers (PSWs). This article

Reducing health inequalities remains a challenge for policy makers across the world. Beginning from Lewin’s famous dictum that “there is nothing as practical as a good theory”, this paper begins from an appreciative discussion of ‘fundamental cause theory’, emphasizing the elegance of its theoretical encapsulation of the challenge, the relevance of its critical focus for action, and its potential to

Scholarship on the commodification of the body investigates how extractable materials – including cells, organs, and other substances – intersect with economic precarity, perceptions of value, and the intersections between scientific and technological advances and shifting cultural ethical and moral systems. Gender, sexuality, race, class and privilege, of course, lie at the root of these debates.

Men account for three‐quarters of suicide deaths in the UK, yet we know little about how at‐risk men construct their experiences of moving towards – and then subsequently stepping back from – suicide, nor the part played by relational factors therein. An inductive thematic analysis was used to examine narrative interviews with eleven UK men who self‐reported serious thoughts, plans and up‐to and including

Fertility awareness apps, which help to identify the ‘fertile window’ when conception is most likely, have been hailed as ‘revolutionising’ women’s reproductive health. Despite rapidly growing popularity, little research has explored how people use these apps when trying to conceive and what these apps mean to them. We draw on in‐depth, qualitative interviews, adopting a critical digital health studies