The Age of Stress

Science and the Search for Stability
Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-0-19-958862-6
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 326 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 655 g

We are living in a stressful world. Despite our familiarity with the notion, stress remains an elusive concept. In The Age of Stress, Mark Jackson explores the history of scientific studies of stress in the modern world. In particular, he reveals how the science that legitimates and fuels current anxieties about stress has been shaped by a wide range of socio-political and cultural, as well as biological, factors: stress, he argues, is both a condition and a
metaphor.

This approach is not designed or intended to deny the reality of stress in people's lives, or to undermine the validity of scientific investigations. Rather, Jackson suggests that if we are to comprehend the ubiquity and impact of stress in our own times, or to explain how stress has commandeered such a central place in the modern imagination, we need to understand not only the evolution of the medical science and technology that has gradually uncovered the biological pathways between stress
and disease in recent decades, but also the shifting political and cultural contexts that have invested that scientific knowledge with meaning and authority. In particular, he argues that we need to acknowledge the manner in which our obsessions with the relationship between stress and disease are the
product of broader historical concerns about the preservation of personal and political, as well as physiological, stability.

Zielgruppe

Academics, students, and readers interested in the history of medicine and in the history of science

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jackson, Mark

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Human- und Sozialwissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Geschichte der Medizin

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Prologue: The age of stress
1: The shock of Modernity
2: Adaptation and Disease
3: The Biochemistry of Life
4: The Cathedral of Stress
5: Coping with Stress
6: The Pursuit of Happiness
Epilogue: The search for stability
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Mark Jackson is Director of the Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter. He has served as Chair of the Wellcome Trust History of Medicine Funding Committee, Chair of the Wellcome Trust Research Resources Funding Committee, and Senior Academic Adviser (Medical Humanities) to the Wellcome Trust. He was a member of the History Panel for REF 2014 and has taught modules in the history of medicine and science for thirty years. His books include New-born
Child Murder (1996), The Borderland of Imbecility (2000), Allergy: The History of a Modern Malady (2006), Health and the Modern Home (ed., 2007), Asthma: The Biography (2009), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine (ed., 2011), The History of Medicine: A Beginner's Guide (2014), and The Routledge
History of Disease (ed., 2016). He is currently writing a book on the history of the midlife crisis.