BCSM Publications

By Charles L. Briggs and Daniel C. Hallin: This book examines the relationship between media and medicine. Drawing on insights from anthropology, linguistics, and media studies, it considers the fundamental role of news coverage in constructing wider cultural understandings of...Read more about Making Health Public: How News Coverage Is Remaking Media, Medicine, and Contemporary Life

By: Charles L. Briggs

In Incommunicable, Charles L. Briggs examines the long-standing presumptions that medical discourse translates easily across geographic, racial, and class boundaries. Bringing linguistic and medical anthropology into conversation...Read more about Incommunicable: Toward Communicative Justice in Health and Medicine

By Elena Conis - The story of an infamous poison that left toxic bodies and decimated wildlife in its wake is also a cautionary tale about how corporations stoke the flames of science denialism for profit. The chemical compound DDT first earned fame during World War II by wiping...Read more about How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT

By Jason Corburn - In Cities for Life, public health expert Jason Corburn shares lessons from three of these cities: Richmond, California; Medellín, Colombia; and Nairobi, Kenya. Corburn draws from his work with citizens, activists, and decision-...Read more about Cities for Life: How Communities Can Recover from Trauma and Rebuild for Health

By Eugene T. Richardson - In Epidemic Illusions, Eugene Richardson, a physician and an anthropologist, contends that public health practices—from epidemiological modeling and outbreak containment to Big Data and causal inference—play an essential role in perpetuating a...Read more about Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health

Seth Holmes - Este libro muestra la realidad de los migrantes mexicanos a Estados Unidos, para el trabajo agrícola. Además de un texto académico, es un libro que puede leerse como libro de aventuras. Su autor hace una crónica descarnada de lo que han tenido que pasar los...Read more about Fruta fresca, cuerpos marchitos

By Michelle Perro and Vincanne Adams - With chronic disorders among American children reaching epidemic levels, hundreds of thousands of parents are desperately seeking solutions to their children’s declining health, often with little medical guidance from the experts. What’...Read more about What's Making Our Children Sick?

Jason Corburn - Urban slum dwellers—especially in emerging-economy countries—are often poor, live in squalor, and suffer unnecessarily from disease, disability, premature death, and reduced life expectancy. Yet living in a city can and should be healthy. Slum Health...Read more about Slum Health: From the Cell to the Street

Charles L. Briggs and Clara Mantini-Briggs -Tell Me Why My Children Died tells the gripping story of indigenous leaders' efforts to identify a strange disease that killed thirty-two children and six young adults in a Venezuelan rain forest between 2007 and 2008. In this...Read more about Tell Me Why My Children Died: Rabies, Indigenous Knowledge, and Communicative Justice

Thomas W. Laqueur -The Greek philosopher Diogenes said that when he died his body should be tossed over the city walls for beasts to scavenge. Why should he or anyone else care what became of his corpse? In The Work of the Dead, acclaimed cultural...Read more about The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains

By Charles L. Briggs, Enrique Moraleda Izco, Norbelys Gómez, Conrado Moraleda Izco, Tirso Gómez, and Clara Mantini-Briggs Entre 2007 y 2008, una enfermedad misteriosa mató a 38 niños, niñas y jóvenes indígenas warao en Delta Amacuro, Venezuela....Read more about Una "enfermedad monstruo:" Indigenas derribando el cerco de la discriminacion racial en salud (A Monster Disease: Indigenous Peoples Breaking Down the Wall of Health-Based Discrimination)