States of Disease Political Environments and Human Health [Paperback]

Human health is shaped by the interactions between social and ecological systems. InStates of Disease,Brian King advances a social ecology of health framework to demonstrate how historical spatial formations contribute to contemporary vulnerabilities to disease and the opportunities for health justice. He examines how expanded access to antiretroviral therapy is transforming managed HIV in South Africa. And he reveals how environmental health is shifting due to global climate change and flooding variability in northern Botswana. These case studies illustrate how the political environmental context shapes the ways in which health is embodied, experienced, and managed.   

Brian Kingis Associate Professor of Geography at The Pennsylvania State University. 

“States of Diseaseis a major contribution to the study of the political ecology of health. Drawing upon long-term research from Southern Africa, King shows how human health is produced through complex social, political, and economic systems. The standard medical model too often limits our view, so we fail to draw the connections that could produce healthier social relations. A crucial intervention.”—Joel Wainwright, author of Decolonizing Development: Colonial Power and the Maya

“Social scientists have increasingly applied new analytical approaches to the study of health—yet the discipline of geography has largely been on the sidelines. States of Disease sharpens the cutting-edge tools of political ecology to argue persuasively that ecological conditions are integral to the politics and spatiality of disease and wellness. In contributing to multilayered understandings of HIV/AIDS, the book challenges dominant biomedical approaches.”—Mark Hunter, author of Love in the Time of AIDS: Inequality, Gender, and Rights in South Africa

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