Health Education Research, Vol. 18, No. 3, 404-407,
June 2003
© 2003 Oxford University Press
BOOK REVIEW |
Social Epidemiology
Berkman, LF, Kawachi I (Eds) Oxford University Press, New York, 2000, pp. 391.
Division of Cancer Prevention, National Cancer Institute, Rockville, MD
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
This is a great book, this is a frustrating book. It is a great book because its intent is to push the field of epidemiology and public health as a whole to look beyond individual risk behaviours to examine the broader social determinants of health. This is especially important now when all the rage at NIH—and dollars—is now headed in the opposite direction, towards proteomics and molecular genetics. It is a frustrating book because it is virtually devoid of any social theory that could provide more solid direction about where to look and how to think about such sociological influences. In a book that aims to set the agenda for research on macro-level social factors, it is striking that the only social theorists to appear in the index are fleeting references to Marx and Durkheim. Not once are the words positivism or post-modernism—issues that have raged across the social sciences