http://culturematters.wordpress.com/2014/07/26/tuberculosis-more-anthropologists-wanted/
Paul, as you are associated with medical research, I know you're familiar with the World Health Organization's Quality of Life Questionnaire, and I wonder if the WHO might have some leads on social science research related to the world issuance of the questionnaire to tuberculosis patients.
Publications such as Tropical Medicine and International Health, BMC Public Health, and the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences have some good articles related to public perception of the disease.
You might also review Eduardo Gomez's work in Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law (February 2013), V38, Issue 1. Another potential hit from the social science approach would be S. Chandra's work on resurrection of social infrastructure published in Health Research Policy & Systems.
A very good question - which I hope will inspire a much needed debate. An article of interest may be: Ascuntar, J.M et al (2010): Fear, infection and compassion: Social representations of tuberculosis in Medellin, Colombia, 2007. INT J TUBERC LUNG DIS 14(10):1323–1329. Another is van der Walta, H. and Swartz, L (2002): Task orientated nursing in a tuberculosis control programme in South Africa: where does it come from and what keeps it going? Social Science and Medicine.
A colleague in Norway, Mette Sagbakken, has done a lot of qualitative work on TB in Ethiopia and Norway, and published widely - google her, and you find some good articles. I was working in the TB field till 2009, and have a lot of good resources on training of health providers in communicating about TB (plus research to assess the effect of the training) - am in the process of publishing the training materials, and articles. The model has been developed with nurses and physicians, and implemented in 7 countries - now going broader than "only" TB. I also have conducted research to develop patient centered materials on TB, but - have focused on making it available for implementers, rather than on writing academic articles. The TB field is extremely dominated by medical professionals, and social scientists are much needed to answer the question you raise.
Thanks Sara and Ane! Some really great leads!
I was also pointed in the direction of Andrew McDowell's work (Finding Breath in India) as well.
Paul, John Eyles and myself just wrote a chapter on 'Tuberculosis: a scourge for development?' which will be published as part of the forthcoming Ashgate edited book on 'Geographies of Health and Development' edited by Isaac Luginaah and Rachel Bezner Kerr (see http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409454571). It is not out yet (scheduled for February 2015) but if you are interested I can send you a pre-print version of that chapter. In addition, there are a number of references you might find useful, e.g.
Barnes, D. 1995. The making of a social disease. Tuberculosis in Ninetheenth-Century France. Berkeley: The University of California Press.
Benatar, S. and Upshur, R. 2010. Tuberculosis and poverty. International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, 14, 1215-1221.
Delfino, D. and Simmons, P. 2005. Dynamics of tuberculosis and economic growth. Environment and Development Economics, 10(6), 719-743.
Harling, G., Ehrlich, R. and Myer, L. 2008. The social epidemiology of tuberculosis in South Africa. Social Science and Medicine, 66, 492-505.
I can send you more as part of our chapter I mentioned. Good luck with your research!
Dear Dr,. Paul mason,
You can search the archives of "Economic & Political Weekly" the leading Indian Social Science journal. I presume you will find around 7-8 articles by Social Scientists. I have just searched the archive with key word Tuberculosis and found the references. However, I have not gone through the full articles and as such, I can not tell about the contents. Besides, as far as I can recall, there were a few articles in WHO Chronicles & World Healththe later were sort of popular articles. I am talking about these journals of 1980s. Incidentally, I had been a Medical Librarian for nearly two decades and shifted to Social Science domain for a decade & as I am away from the subject for such a long time, I could not provide the exact citations.
Hello, A quick search of Social Science Abstracts reveals a nice crop of articles on Tb. More specifically, journals like, Social Science & Medicine, Social Medicine, Sociology of Health & Illness, among others I am sure are a good source for such works. The Lancet too often includes interdisciplinary articles, some of which undoubtedly focus specifically on Tb. Having said this, soc.sci articles on Tb are far fewer in number than those rooted in the biomedical tradition--so there is still much work to be done.
There are Social science references on Tb social side... at least this side of the pond. I've been in the panel of a couple of Medical Anth. PhD disertations a few years back... in Spanish.
As this ref. is:
http://pedsocial.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/tuberculosis-una-infeccion-con-notables-connotaciones-sociales/
Hi Paul, while conducting fieldwork in Mali, I collaborated with a sociologist from Mauritania who wrote his PhD-thesis about social aspects of Tb in nomadic settings. His study focuses on 'mechanisms of vulnerability in relation to representations of the illness and access to treatment.'
Ould Taleb, Moustapha. 2008: Nomadic people's representations of tuberculosis in Mauritania and Chad. PhD-thesis within the framework of the NCCR North-South, University of Cocody, Abidjan; Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Basel.
https://zasb.unibas.ch/research/phd-theses/moustapha-ould-taleb/
A literature review of socio-cultural aspects of Tb is in the following article:
Ho, M.-J. 2004. Socio-cultural aspects of tuberculosis: a literature review and a case study of immigrant tuberculosis. Social Science & Medicine 59: 753-762.
Hi there, my masters thesis in ethnobotany focused on plants traditionally used to treat TB, I was also interested in the sociology and history of this disease and found the book listed below very helpful.
Roberts, Charlotte and Jane Buikstra
2004 The Bioarchaeology of Tuberculosis: A Global View on a Reemerging Disease.
http://www.amazon.ca/The-Bioarchaeology-Tuberculosis-Reemerging-Disease/dp/0813032695
I know Nora Engel (Maastricht University) is working on that: https://unimaas.academia.edu/NoraEngel