This volume brings together key readings of significant moments in the understanding of health. It goes beyond the often superficial literature-review style of medical sociology texts.

Colin Samson is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex where he has taught medical sociology, social policy, cultural studies and American studies since 1990. He has also been a Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the co-editor of The Social Construction of Social Policy (with Nigel South, 1996). He is currently working on a series of studies on the health and human rights of Aboriginal peoples in Canada.