Successful Societies How Institutions and Culture Affect Health

Why are some societies more successful than others at promoting individual and collective well-being? This book integrates recent research in social epidemiology with broader perspectives in social science to explore why some societies are more successful than others at securing population health. It explores the social roots of health inequalities, arguing that inequalities in health are based not only on economic inequalities, but on the structure of social relations. It develops sophisticated perspectives on social relations, which emphasize the ways in which cultural frameworks as well as institutions condition people's health. It reports on research into health inequalities in the developed and developing worlds, covering a wide range of national case studies, and into the ways in which social relations condition the effectiveness of public policies aimed at improving health.

Introduction Peter A. Hall and Michele Lamont; 1. Population health and the dynamics of collective development Clyde Hertzman and Arjumand Siddiqi; 2. Social interactions in human development: pathways to health and capabilities Daniel P. Keating; 3. Health, social relations and public policy Peter A. Hall and Rosemary C. R. Taylor; 4. Population health and development: an institutional-cultural approach to capability expansion Peter Evans; 5. Responding to AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa: culture, institutions, and health Ann Swidler; 6. Responses to racism, health, and social inclusion as a dimension of successful societies Michele Lamont; 7. Collective imaginary and population health (how health data can highlight cultural history) Gerard Bouchard; 8. Making sense of public health: citizenship regimes and public health in Victorian England Jane Jenson; 9. The multicultural welfare state? Will Kymlicka; 10. From state-centrism to neoliberalism: macro-historical contexts of population health since World War II William H. Sewell, Jr.

Focusing on population health as an indicator of social success, this book examines how social institutions and cultural frameworks affect health and the policies that address it. Built on dialogue among diverse disciplines, it offers social epidemiologists and social scientists broader perspectives on the social determinants of population health.

Peter A. Hall is Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies at Harvard University and Co-Director of the Successful Societies Program for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. He is the author of Governing the Economy (1986) and more than seventy articles in comparative political economy. He is an editor of many books, including Changing France: The Politics that Markets Make (2006), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (2001), and The Political Power of Economic Ideas (1989).
Michèle Lamont is Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and Professor of Sociology and African and African-American Studies at Harvard University and Co-Director of the Successful Societies Program. She is the author of Money, Morals, and Manners (1992), The Dignity of Working Men (2000), How Professors Think (2009), and edited books such as Cultivating Differences (1992), The Cultural Territories of Race (1999), and Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology (2000). She is serving as Chair of the Council for European Studies.