E-raamat: Building the Worlds That Kill Us: Disease, Death, and Inequality in American History

"Building the Worlds that Kill Us traces the historical development of health as a "product" of industry, economic advance, globalization, and social inequality. Diseases of the past are emblematic of the changing physical, economic, and ideological realities of American culture at any moment. For example, the conventional wisdom holds that the classic infectious and communicable diseases of the nineteenth century-typhoid, cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis-were products of an urbanizing, industrializing society that jammed people into tenements, left them with outdoor plumbing, and polluted the water supply. But rather than products of an unavoidable physical environment created by an urbanizing, industrializing world, Rosner and Markowitz argue they are emblematic of American culture and its ideological and social values. How did these values determine that conditions for some could be sacrificed for the wealth of others? Inevitably, Americans were making social decision about who shall live and who shalldie. Popular ideas of personal or community "worthiness"-who were the "truly" needy and who were "unworthy" or "undeserving"-shaped our ideas that disease was linked to morality, which in turn created institutions that served the wealthy and the poor, the immigrant and the native born American, the black and the white, indigenous populations and those of European backgrounds unequally. Health and disease are a lens through which to see our changing social order and the intellectual and physical landscape. From colonialism to industrialism, plastics to pollution, the authors chart the development of new diseases and occupational afflictions as they keep pace with an advancing America over four hundred years"--

Through the lens of death and disease, Building the Worlds That Kill Us provides a new way of understanding the history of the United States from the colonial era to the present.

Across American history, the question of whose lives are long and healthy and whose lives are short and sick has always been shaped by the social and economic order. From the dispossession of Indigenous people and the horrors of slavery to infectious diseases spreading in overcrowded tenements and the vast environmental contamination caused by industrialization, and through climate change and pandemics in the twenty-first century, those in power have left others behind.

Through the lens of death and disease, Building the Worlds That Kill Us provides a new way of understanding the history of the United States from the colonial era to the present. David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz demonstrate that the changing rates and kinds of illnesses reflect social, political, and economic structures and inequalities of race, class, and gender. These deep inequities determine the disparate health experiences of rich and poor, Black and white, men and women, immigrant and native-born, boss and worker, Indigenous and settler. This book underscores that powerful people and institutions have always seen some lives as more valuable than others, and it emphasizes how those who have been most affected by the disparities in rates of disease and death have challenged and changed these systems. Ultimately, this history shows that unequal outcomes are a choice—and we can instead collectively make decisions that foster life and health.