Social and Cultural Lives of Immune Systems (Theory and Practice in Medical Anthropology)

Social and Cultural Lives of Immune Systems introduces a provocative new hypothesis in medico-social theory - the theory that immunity and disease are in part socially constituted. It argues that immune systems function not just as biological entities but also as symbolic concepts charged with political significance. Bridging elements of psychology, sociology, body theory, immunology and medical anthropology, twelve papers from leading scholars explain some of the health-hazards of emotional and social pressure, whilst analysing the semiotic and social responses to the imagery of immunity. Book Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 4 Contents......Page 5 List of illustrations......Page 8 List of contributors......Page 10 Acknowledgements......Page 11 Introduction: social and cultural lives of immune systems in a semiotic universe......Page 12 Theoretical perspectives......Page 28 Telling stories: the health benefits of disclosure......Page 30 Relating to our worlds in a psychobiological context: the impact of disclosure on self-generation and immunity......Page 47 Metaphors our bodyminds live by......Page 61 ~Immune~ to emotion: the relative absence of emotion in PNI, and its centrality to everything else......Page 93 PNI in the wild: anthropological fieldwork using endocrine and immune variables......Page 114 Childhood stress: endocrine and immune responses to psychosocial events......Page 116 Cultural congruity and the cortisol stress response among Dominican men......Page 158 Life event stress and immune function in Samoan adolescents: toward a cross-cultural psychoneuroimmunology......Page 181 Civilization and its stressed discontents: from individual stress to cross-national comparisons......Page 200 The enigma of hypertension and psychosomatic illness: lessons for psychoneuroimmunology from beyond the conscious mind......Page 202 Cultural variations in the placebo effect: ulcers, anxiety, and blood pressure......Page 217 Corporeal flows: the immune system, global economies of food, and new implications for health......Page 243 Critical retrospectives......Page 278 Stressful encounters of an immunological kind: the social dimensions of psychoneuroimmunology......Page 280 Reflections on embodiment......Page 293 Index......Page 314 Annotation Social and Cultural Lives of Immune Systems introduces a provocative new hypothesis in medico-social theory - the theory that immunity and disease are in part socially constituted. It argues that immune systems function not just as biological entities but also as symbolic concepts charged with political significance. Bridging elements of psychology, sociology, body theory, immunology and medical anthropology, twelve papers from leading scholars explain some of the health-hazards of emotional and social pressure, whilst analysing the semiotic and social responses to the imagery of immunity This book introduces a provocative new branch of social theory: the hypothesis that immunity and disease are in part socially constituted. It suggests that immune systems function not only as material entities but also as social symbols. [from publisher's advertisement]