‘Everyday Health’, Embodiment, and Selfhood Since 1950: 61

The volume explores the shaping of ‘everyday health’ in different contexts since 1950. It shows how different aspects of identity affected experiences of health and wellbeing. ‘Everyday Health’, embodiment, and selfhood since 1950 is a bold intervention in the social history of medicine, exploring the shaping of ‘everyday health’ in different contexts since 1950.The volume centres the day-to-day health experiences of diverse individuals and groups, in contrast to histories that focus on states, medical professionals, and other experts. It illustrates how different aspects of identity affected experiences of health and wellbeing in the postwar era. Its emphasis on intersectionality extends existing social histories of health and contributes to wider discussions on the politics of identity. The volume foregrounds methodologies for writing bottom-up histories of health, subjectivity, and embodiment. Several chapters explore how historians research, write, and interact with different participants and audiences. This methodological focus ensures its relevance to scholars everywhere. In problematising the term ‘everyday health’, it contributes to debates on ‘expertise’ and ‘ordinariness’.This exciting new volume establishes ‘everyday health’ as a lens through which to (re)examine the history of health and medicine. What is the history of ‘everyday health’ in the postwar world, and where might we find it? This volume moves away from top-down histories of health and medicine that focus on states, medical professionals, and other experts. Instead, it centres the day-to-day lives of people in diverse contexts from 1950 to the present. Chapters explore how gender, class, ‘race’, sexuality, disability, and age mediated experiences of health and wellbeing in historical context. The volume foregrounds methodologies for writing bottom-up histories of health, subjectivity, and embodiment, offering insights applicable to scholars of times and places beyond those represented in the case studies presented here. Drawing together cutting-edge scholarship, the volume establishes and critically interrogates ‘everyday health’ as a crucial concept that will shape future histories of health and medicine.

Pagina's: 470, Paperback, Manchester University Press