Different professional and academic disciplines have addressed the HIV/AIDS pandemic from a variety of perspectives, using different analytical approaches. By bringing these together in one volume, Learning from HIV/AIDS provides a more complete picture of this multi-faceted disease - from the biological and social factors which facilitate HIV transmission - to the powerful cultural and political forces which fuel the pandemic. Chapters from contributors working on the aetiology, treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS identify how their work has helped predict the spread of HIV and has improved the survival of those infected. Yet interventions to reduce the spread of HIV have had limited success, and few HIV-infected individuals have access to combination drug therapies. Written for students and researchers, and taking an interdisciplinary perspective, this book demonstrates that progress in developing effective and acceptable interventions can only be achieved through collaboration between the biological, medical and social sciences.

In human populations, biological, social, spatial, ecological and economic aspects of existence are inextricably linked, demanding a holistic approach to their study. Many undergraduate and postgraduate courses now emphasise the value of studying human populations using theoretical frameworks and methodologies from different traditional disciplines. Human Population Dynamics introduces such frameworks and methodologies whilst demonstrating how changes in human population structure can be addressed from several different academic perspectives. As such, the book contains contributions from world-renowned researchers in demography, social and biological anthropology, genetics, biology, sociology, ecology, history and human geography. In particular, the contributors emphasise the lability of many population structures and boundaries, as viewed from their area of expertise. This text is aimed at undergraduate students, graduates and academic researchers from any academic discipline which considers human populations.

As we enter the twenty-first century, a number of medical, environmental and social changes have profoundly affected human reproduction. This book discusses some of the more dramatic changes in an accessible manner, illustrating the ways in which human biology and culture can affect fertility and providing a unique interdisciplinary perspective on the subject. Topics include medical technologies that equip us with potential cures for many causes of infertility; diseases such as AIDS that have a devastating impact on the reproductive and social lives of humans, particularly in areas with limited access to medical care; increasing industrialisation and the development of fabricated materials that pollute our environment in unforeseen ways with possibly devastating effects on human health and fertility; and, finally, social revolutions that profoundly alter human relationships, such as non-marital unions between heterosexual couples, same-sex relationships, adoption and surrogacy which are becoming increasingly common.

It is widely recognised that men and women in societies all over the world have very different experiences of sickness and health. This collection brings together biological and social anthropologists whose work illustrates how these sub-disciplines have approached the task of explaining such differences. We demonstrate that an understanding of science and culture, using the notions of biological 'sex' and socio-culturally constructed 'gender' are both essential for furthering analyses of men's and women's, boys' and girls' experiences of health and disease. We address the important topics of gender differences in parental care, cardiovascular disease, reproductive health and psychological illness, and look at how the medicalisation of women and their relative absence from models of population health might affect their experiences of preventative health measures. This book will be particularly useful for students on human sciences or anthropology courses, or anyone wishing to gain an interdisciplinary perspective on the subject.