Liberalizing, Feminizing and Popularizing Health Communications in Asia

Liberalizing, Feminizing and Popularizing Health Communications in Asia provides insights into the manner in which biomedical discourses are communicated and portrayed in Asia in light of the rapidly evolving socio-cultural, technological and epidemiological undercurrents. Highlighting the more pluralized and interactive dynamics in the appropriation and dissemination of medical and public health knowledge, its specific case studies challenge the notions of the one way transmission of medicine by modern Western trained doctors and public health officials to ignorant patients and masses, particularly in the non-Western world. With specific examples drawn from popular media, this volume examines the extent to which these developments have given the broader public both greater access to information and choices. Multidisciplinary in scope and truly international in focus, it relates the everyday of health communications to more macro social trends on the Asian continent and will be of interest to scholars within science and technology studies, media and cultural studies and sociology alike.

Introduction, Liew Kai Khiun; Part I Liberalizing Health; Chapter 1 Mediations of Health and the Development of a Nation: Late Suharto, Late Modernity, Steve Ferzacca; Chapter 2 Reporting HIV and its Broader Impact in Asia: The Case of Papua New Guinea (PNG), Trevor Cullen; Chapter 3 Reading HIV/AIDS in the Indian Media: Social, Cultural and Economic Constructions, Shaunak Sastry, Mohan J. Dutta; Chapter 4 Press Coverage of Bird Flu Epidemic in Vietnam, Annick Guénel, Sylvia Klingberg; Part II Feminizing Health; Chapter 5 Caesarean Birth, Media, Motherhood and Nation in Taiwan, Chen-I Kuan; Chapter 6 Information and Decision Making among Women with Breast Cancer: Constraints on the Informed Decision, Khor Yoke Lim, Gerald Goh Guan Gan; Chapter 7 Making the Oral Contraceptive “for Me” in Japan: Managing the Semiotics of Reproductive Health in Virtual Space, Kathryn Goldfarb; Part III Popularizing Health; Chapter 8 The Radio Communication Project in Nepal: Culture, Power, and Meaning in Constructions of Health, Mohan J. Dutta, Iccha Basnyat; Chapter 9 Of Plastic Beauties and Flower Boys: Representations of Cosmetic Surgery in South Korean Films, Kelly Fu; Chapter 10 When Distortion is Normal: The Media and Body Image Disturbance among Young People in Hong Kong, Annisa Lee Lai; Chapter 11 How to Live: Reading China’s Popular Health Media, Judith Farquhar;

Liew Kai Khiun is a postdoctoral researcher at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore