Medicine on a Larger Scale
Global Histories of Social Medicine

This collection relocates the roots of social medicine globally, offering valuable tools for revitalizing and decolonizing the field.

Anne Kveim Lie (Edited by), Jeremy A. Greene (Edited by), Warwick Anderson (Edited by)

9781009428569, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 May 2025

350 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.677 kg

'This collection of essays is pivotal to understanding the historical urgency of global public health. The political visibility of that urgency is embedded in global histories of social medicine movements that asked what are the social determinants of population health in post-colonial worlds. Collectively these essays powerfully demonstrate the interrogative necessity of historical analysis in order to address crippling global inequalities in health, premature mortality and debilitating morbidities.' Dorothy Porter, University of California, San Francisco

In a world of growing health inequity and ecological injustice, how do we revitalize medicine and public health to tackle new problems? This groundbreaking collection draws together case studies of social medicine in the Global South, radically shifting our understanding of social science in healthcare. Looking beyond a narrative originating in nineteenth-century Europe, a team of expert contributors explores a far broader set of roots and branches, with nodes in Sub-Saharan Africa, South America, Oceania, the Middle East, and Asia. This plural approach reframes and decolonizes the study of social medicine, highlighting connections to social justice and health equity, social science and state formation, bottom-up community initiatives, grassroots movements, and an array of revolutionary sensibilities. As a truly global history, this book offers a more usable past to imagine a new politics of social medicine for medical professionals and healthcare workers worldwide. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Introduction: the many lives and afterlives of social medicine Warwick Anderson, Jeremy A. Greene and Anne Kveim Lie
Decentering Rudolf Virchow: the making of a social medicine pioneer Carsten Timmermann
2. Social medicine in the Arab world: colonial legacies and postcolonial praxis Joelle M. Abi-Rached and Lidia Helou
3. Latin American social medicine, across the waves Eric D. Carter
4. Imperial social medicine in Southeast Asia: the Bandung Intergovernmental Conference on Rural Hygiene Laurence Monnais and Hans Pols
5. Social and socialist: Ideas of health, medicine and society across the Iron Curtain Dora Vargha
6. Social medicine in social democracy Anne Kveim Lie and Per Haave
7. American social medicine in the shadow of socialized medicine Jeremy A. Greene, Scott H. Podolsky and David S. Jones
8. A 'counter-hegemonic' social medicine: leftist physicians during the Latin American Cold War Sebastian Fonseca
9. The African roots of community oriented primary care Abigail H. Neely
10. Barefoot doctors and social medicine in China Xiaoping Fang
11. From 'Saude Publica' to 'Medicina Social' to 'Saude Coletiva': the emergence of a transepistemic arena in Brazil Kenneth Rochel de Camargo
12. Settler colonial social medicine and community health: Australasian adaptations, reinventions, and denials Warwick Anderson, James Dunk and Connie Musolino
13. Social medicine beyond colonial rule: the medical field units of Ghana, 1930–2000 David Bannister
14. Changing avatars of social medicine in the Indian Subcontinent Rama V. Baru
15. Social medicine, otherwise: Cuban health (care) as political praxis P. Sean Brotherton
Afterword: struggling with and for social medicine Anne-Emanuelle Birn
Afterword: the future(s) of social medicine Helena Hansen.

Subject Areas: History of medicine [MBX]