[URBANTH-L] Call for Chapters: Killer Commodities: A Critical Anthropological Examination of Corporate Products and Public Health

[Angela Jancius]

Call for Book Chapters

Killer Commodities:
A Critical Anthropological Examination of Corporate Products and Public
Health
Edited by Merrill Singer, Ph.D. and Hans Baer, Ph.D.
Publisher: AltaMira Press

Almost every day there are fresh accounts plastered across newspaper
headlines and broadcast solemnly on the evening news of consumer products,
ostensibly designed to meet consumer wants and desires, that turn out to be
deadly in their unintended effects. From a long and ever growing list of
pharmaceutical products to children's toys, the public health has suffered
because very unsafe items regularly reach consumer hands. The costs are
telling. In this book, we refer to these products as "killer commodities,"
consumer goods produced and marketed by leading corporations that turn out
before long to be highly dangerous and sometimes fatal for consumers or
others. In retrospect, it is not uncommon to learn that producers of these
toxic products had some degree of awareness that their goods might be
hazardous, but the appeal of untold fortune pushed them to mass
distribution. This edited volume, a companion to the recently published
Unhealthy Health Policies (AltaMira 2004), will include original chapters
from critical medical anthropologists and other health social scientists
from around the world. Also included in the book will be chapters that
address deadly aspects of the corporate production processes as well as
health-threatening environmental destruction tied to commodity production.

United around a common theme of substantial consequence: what is the extent
of harm wrought by unsafe, unsound, and inadequately tested consumer goods
from manufacture to discard, the chapters in this book will address the ways
in which the damage of dangerous corporate production is distributed in
society in light of the existing configuration of social inequality between
nations, social classes, ethnic/racial groups, and genders. Written in the
vogue of the new public-focused anthropology, the book argues that the
public has not been granted a full and complete airing of the public health
aspects of many of the products they consume.

If you are interested in contributing a 30 page (double spaced) chapter for
consideration for inclusion in this timely volume, please send a one page
description with title, brief chapter overview, author(s) name and
affiliations/discipline, availability to complete the chapter by the Spring
2006, and willingness to make changes in your draft based on comments by the
editors, as well as inquires by July 15, 2005 to:

Merrill Singer anthro8566 at aol.com and Hans Baer habaer at ualr.edu
Merrill Singer
Center for Community Health Research
Hispanic Health Council
175 Main St.
Hartford, CT 06106
(860)527-0856, EX. 253
Email: anthro8566 at aol.com