Tuesday, March 16, 2010
LECTURE AT WAGNER COLLEGE TONIGHT COVERS SOCIOLOGY OF DISEASE
By TEVAH PLATT
GRYMES HILL — Among the most prevalent theories discussed in today’s college classrooms is social constructionism, which poses that categories like “race” and “gender” aren’t fixed descriptions of reality, but are the shifting products of social forces, historical contexts, and human choices.
That notion gives scholars pause, too, over concepts of health, where words like “epidemic,” “obesity,” or even “disease,” can be charged with political and cultural, as well as scientific meanings.
Sociologist Ananya Mukherjea will speak on the sociology of epidemics tonight as part of Wagner College’s Academic and Cultural Enrichment Lecture Series. The discussion: “The Sociology of Pandemics: The Way Social Power Shapes the Trajectory of Disease” will be held at 7 p.m. in Spiro Hall of the Grymes Hill campus.
The event is open to the public.
Dr. Mukherjea, a professor from the College of Staten Island’s Women’s Studies Program and Department of Sociology, will speak about the intersection of gender and medical conditions such as HIV/AIDS, flu, depression and obesity, all of which have been labeled as “emerging epidemics.”
Dr. Mukherjea edited “Understanding Emerging Epidemics: Social and Political Approaches,” a collected volume published last month to offer empirical and theoretical approaches to the sociological study of health.
The term “emerging epidemic” is a bit controversial, according to Dr. Mukherjea, who said her book examines the concept of epidemics, the politics of managing them, and “behavioral or psychological conditions such as depression and obesity that are called epidemics but may or may not be.”
Proponents of the weight-acceptance movement, among others, have argued that the “obesity epidemic” is bogus, that evidence fails to correlate moderate obesity with poor health, that the measure of obesity is arbitrary, and that attitudes toward obesity are tainted by cultural concepts of class, beauty and social status that favor thin people.
Alexa Dietrich of Wagner College’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology will be the respondent at tonight’s event, sponsored by Drs. Amy Eshleman and Jean Halley of Wagner College.
Advance plugs lecture
March 29, 2010
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