Böcker av Iris Borowy

Health and development require one another: there can be no development without a critical mass of people who are sufficiently healthy to do whatever it takes for development to occur, and people cannot be healthy without societal developments that enable standards of health to be maintained or improved. However, the ways in which health and development interact are complex and contested. This volume unites eleven case studies from nine countries in three continents and two international organizations since the late-nineteenth century. Collectively, they show how different actors have struggled to reconcile the sometimes contradictory nature of health and development policies, and the subordination of these policies to a range of political objectives.

This handbook is the first systematic overview of the history of development ideas, themes, and actors in the twentieth century. The book reflects on its blind spots, points out avenues for future research, and brings together a greater plurality of regions, actors, and approaches than other publications on the subject.

New perspectives on the history of twentieth century public health in Europe.

Social medicine was one of the key health paradigms of the early twentieth century. It perceived public health as a function of social conditions and aimed at improving it through comprehensive, horizontal strategies. Yet, it was no homogeneous or static phenomenon. Depending on time, place and circumstances, it took different, sometimes ideologically contradictory forms. This volume portrays leading medical experts from seven European countries. Their juxtaposition reveals a network of international interaction and shows how different people coped with the crises of the time in different ways, sometimes as part of the scientific mainstream, sometimes as opposition under attack, sometimes in exile. Their biographies reflect an ambivalent interplay of biomedicine, politics and social theory.