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Zusatztext scholarly and carefully referenced book ... Kunitz writes interestingly about the options for providing health care. Klappentext This book discusses the various social! political! and cultural forces that shape the distribution of diseases in populations. It is based on a series of comparative studies of the historical and contemporary disease patterns of the indigenous peoples of America north of Mexico! Polynesia! andAustralia. The purpose of the comparisons is to control in a quasi-experimental way certain crucial variables in order to examine the impact on health of other variables. The comparisons are made at increasingly more refined levels of analysis. Thus! once disease ecology has been held roughlyconstant! one can see more clearly the ways in which colonial policy and political institutions have shaped the affairs of indigenous peoples. And once policy has been held constant! one can see more clearly how culture can make a difference. And once culture has been held constant! one can see howgender and status make a difference. Kunitz argues that very few broad generalizations adequately explain the distribution of diseases in populations and that to truly comprehend such patterns one must understand the local social context as well the biological characteristics of diseases. The book is thus an argument for theimportance of local knowledge as a complement to the universalizing sort of knowledge that we associate with science. Zusammenfassung This book is based upon a series of historical and contemporary comparative studies of the disease experience of indigenous peoples in North America and Oceania as a result of their contact with, and domination by, Europeans. It argues that this experience, while similar in ,any ways, has been highly variable, the variations depending upon the nature of the Europeans and the policies they pursued, as well as on the culture and social organisation of the indigenous peoples themselves. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1: Natural History and Local History 2: Death in the Fourth World 3: Historical and Contemporary Mortality Patterns in Polynesia 4: Settler Capitalism and the State in Australia 5: The Impact of Socio-Cultural Differences on Health 6: The Health Consequences of Modernization 7: Conclusions Appendix 2-1. The Size and Definition of Indigenous Populations Appendix 3-1. Estimates of Various Polynesian Populations: 1790s-1980s Appendix 6-1. Data and Methods for Regional Analyses ...
