Medical Anthropology and the World System : Second Edition

Rating:
Summary: Very comprehensive, usually interesting read
Review: As a nonacademic with a strong interest in medical anthropology, this book is exactly what I was looking for, a very broad, thorough overview of the subject, with ample history of the development of medical anthropology. It gave me many new perspectives from which to view disease and health issues. It even briefly covers aspects of New Age approaches to health. Very contemporary and up to date. Since it is written as an academic textbook for undergraduate or graduate courses, the layman will find some sections dragging, but overall very comprehensible and engaging.

Rating:
Summary: Not worthy of being called an "academic textbook"
Review: This book is written by anthropologists who label themselves as "the brash left wing of medical anthropology". Indeed, this book is a very b-grade left-wing polemical argument about how capitalism is ruining the world. And that is all it is about. The authors are very intent on instructing impressionable undergraduate students (whom this book is targeted toward) that capitalism is bad; that people who are marginalized under the capitalist system such as people living in the third world, ethnic minorities, women and the working class, are always right and that capitalism and the greed of the ruling elites is at the root of all the world's problems. This may be true but what is the solution? The authors don't offer any solutions, just bash everything and simplify complex political issues by referring to an outdated theory - Wallerstein's world systems theory - as a way of explaining away all the problems of the world.
The arguments begin well, but go off onto tangents, or rants I should say, without any real and constructive conclusions. There is no intelligible objective critique, only half-baked ideas and lots of really old data. By the way, I'm not against this book because I am a right-wing thinker, or a capitalist, I am neither, these authors give the left a bad name. This book proves that even idiots, like the author(s) can get a PHD, but ultimately can't hide the fact that they're idiots.