1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910783844203321

Titolo

Social and cultural lives of immune systems / / edited by James M. Wilce, Jr

Pubbl/distr/stampa

London ; ; New York : , : Routledge, , 2003

ISBN

1-134-38958-2

0-415-31005-9

1-280-02259-0

0-203-40451-3

1-134-38959-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (329 p.)

Collana

Theory and practice in medical anthropology and international health

Altri autori (Persone)

WilceJames MacLynn <1953->

Disciplina

306.4/61

Soggetti

Medical anthropology

Immune system

Culture - Semiotic models

Human body - Social aspects

Human body - Symbolic aspects

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Book Cover; Title; Contents; List of illustrations; List of contributors; Acknowledgements; Introduction: social and cultural lives of immune systems in a semiotic universe; Theoretical perspectives; Telling stories: the health benefits of disclosure; Relating to our worlds in a psychobiological context: the impact of disclosure on self-generation and immunity; Metaphors our bodyminds live by; ~Immune~ to emotion: the relative absence of emotion in PNI, and its centrality to everything else; PNI in the wild: anthropological fieldwork using endocrine and immune variables

Childhood stress: endocrine and immune responses to psychosocial eventsCultural congruity and the cortisol stress response among Dominican men; Life event stress and immune function in Samoan adolescents: toward a cross-cultural psychoneuroimmunology; Civilization and its stressed discontents: from individual stress to cross-national comparisons; The enigma of hypertension and



psychosomatic illness: lessons for psychoneuroimmunology from beyond the conscious mind; Cultural variations in the placebo effect: ulcers, anxiety, and blood pressure

Corporeal flows: the immune system, global economies of food, and new implications for healthCritical retrospectives; Stressful encounters of an immunological kind: the social dimensions of psychoneuroimmunology; Reflections on embodiment; Index

Sommario/riassunto

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 imm