GEG5107 Health, Inequality and Society: from social medicine to global biotechnology

Rating: 30 credits

Prerequisites: None (recommended modules: GEG4102, GEG4103)

Lectures: 2 hours per week, semesters A and B

Seminars: incorporated into lectures

Practicals: -

Fieldwork: -

Assessment: 2 hour examination 60%

2 x 2000 word essay (1 each semester, equally weighted) 40%

Module convenor: Dr Tim Brown and Dr Steve Cummins

Lecturer: Dr Tim Brown, Dr Steve Cummins, Dr Beth Greenhough

Module Aims and Outline:
The overall aim of the module is to provide an introduction to contemporary issues relating to health and biomedical geography. The module is organised into two sections split over two semesters:

Semester One: This section aims to provide students with an understanding of the relationship between health and biomedicine, and how this relationship varies across different spatial, cultural, social and technological contexts. Through examining a range of issues which have emerged as biomedicine has developed over the 20th and 21st centuries, it seeks to teach students how a geographical perspective can be used to critically interrogate the ways in which biomedicine is transforming the geographies of medical research, health and healthcare.

Semester Two: This section aims to give students an understanding of the key determinants of health and health inequality in the countries of the global North. It will cover concepts fundamental to the study of population health from geographical, sociological and epidemiological literatures and will allow students to engage with the recent ‘spatial turn’ in public health. In addition, the section will examine key theoretical concepts, explore the relative merits of psycho-social and neo-materialist approaches and introduce recent debates relating to the eco-social perspective.

Learning Outcomes:

Students will acquire knowledge about:

key social and spatial determinants of health in high and middle-income settings;
key theoretical concepts and debates relating to population health, such as health inequality, context and composition, and psycho-social, neo-materialist and eco-social perspectives;
the relationship between health and biotechnology, and how this has developed over the past 100 years;
critical issues in health and biomedicine and how these vary in impact socially and spatially.

Students will develop key skills and be able to:

interpret complex data and ideas, present and discuss key concepts and work independently and within small groups in the classroom setting;
interpreting and evaluate scholarship from a range of different disciplinary perspectives;
apply a critical geographical perspective in an interdisciplinary context; produce written and verbal argument incorporating course materials.

Preliminary Reading:

Reading – Semester One

Ong, A., Collier, S. (eds.) (2005) Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lock, M. and Nguyen, V. (2010) An anthropology of Biomedicine (Wiley-Blackwell)
Parry, B. (2006) New spaces of biological commodification: the dynamics of trade in genetic resources and bioinformation. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 31, 19-31.
Petryna, A., Lakoff, A. & Kleinman, A. (2006) Global Pharmaceuticals: Ethics, Markets, Practices. London: Duke.
Rose, N. (2008) Will biomedicine transform society? Available at:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/BIOS/Working%20Papers/NikolasRoseWP1final.pdf

Reading – Semester Two

Curtis, S. (2004) Health and Inequality: Geographical Perspectives. London: Sage.
Macintyre, S., Ellaway, A., Cummins S (2002) Place effects on health: how can we conceptualise, operationalise and measure them? Social Science & Medicine 55, 125-139.
Marmot, M. (2005) The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier. London: Bloomsbury.
Rose, G. (2001) Sick individuals and sick populations. International Journal of Epidemiology 30, 427-32.
Szreter, S., Woolcock, M. (2004) Health by association? Social capital, social theory, and the political economy of public health. International Journal of Epidemiology 33, 650-67.
Wilkinson, R.G. (1996) Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality. London: Routledge
Wilkinson, R.G. (2005) The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier. London: New Press.