https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4299-021X
-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Ellen B RUBINSTEIN, Biomedicalization and the Practice of Culture: Globalization and Type 2 Diabetes in the United States and Japan, Social Science Japan Journal, Volume 24, Issue 2, Summer 2021, Pages 443–444, https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyab004
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
Japan in Western popular imagination has long been associated with healthy eating habits, although anyone who has read the nutritional information on a convenience store obentō would be quick to revise their opinion. While Japan may not (yet) lay claim to the obesity epidemic that plagues the US, it has seen a sharp increase in cases of type 2 diabetes over the past several decades. It is here, with the increasing rates of diabetes in both countries, that Armstrong-Hough’s monograph begins.
Despite the awkward title, Armstrong-Hough has written a highly readable and enjoyable comparative account of the diabetes epidemic in both countries. She seeks to answer the question of why American and Japanese perceptions of diabetes differ so drastically despite established international guidelines for diagnosis and treatment. The answer, of course, is that biomedicine is neither monolithic nor hegemonic, and the book is filled with examples to demonstrate just that. Based on extensive participation observation fieldwork in both rural and urban Japan, as well as interviews conducted in the US, Armstrong-Hough lays out a compelling overview of the contrasting explanatory models, and their connections to local culture, that undergird practitioner, patient, and caregiver approaches to type 2 diabetes.
