An associate professor of medicine at UCSF and a frontline responder to the COVID-19 pandemic teams up with the activist and bestselling author of The Value of Nothing to explain how colonization has made us sick and how decolonizing food and medicine can help us heal
The coronavirus pandemic and the shocking racial disparities in its impact. A surge in inflammatory illnesses such as gastrointestinal disorders and asthma. Mass uprisings around the world in response to systemic racism and violence. Climate refugees. Deaths of despair. This is the epoch of endless fire. Your body, society, and planet are inflamed. What is the cause? And how do we begin to restore our individual and collective health?
Boldly original and deeply researched, Inflamed takes us on a medical tour through our digestive, endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, reproductive, immune, and nervous systems. Unlike a traditional anatomy book, however, this groundbreaking work illuminates what ails us as a whole, mapping the hidden connections between our biological systems and the profound injustices of our political, economic, social, and ecological systems. Inflammation is connected to the ground beneath our feet, the food that we eat, the air that we breathe, and the diversity of microbes living inside us, which regulate everything from our brain development to our immune system. It's connected to the number of traumatic events we experienced as children and to the trauma endured by our ancestors. It's connected not only to access to health care but to the very models of health that physicians bring to their medical practice.
Raj Patel, the renowned political economist and New York Times-bestselling author of The Value of Nothing, teams up with the physician and professor of medicine Rupa Marya to offer a radical new cure: the deep medicine of decolonization. If colonization is about dividing and conquering in order to centralize control of resources, decolonization is to heal what has been divided, reestablishing our relationship to the earth, our relationship to each other, and our relationship to our own bodies. Drawing on Rupa Marya's work with patients in marginalized communities and the scholarship on globalization that has made Raj Patel a rock star on the Left, Inflamed shows how a program for decolonizing food and medicine might work--and how it has the potential to transform not only our individual health and well-being but the world.
Publisher: Macmillan
Original Binding: Hardcover with dust jacket
Pages: 496 pages
ISBN-10: 0374602514
Item Weight: 1.6 lbs
Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.5 x 9.3 inches
Customer Reviews: 4 out of 5 stars 501 to 1,000 ratings
"A work of exhilarating scope and relevance to this infected moment in the body politic. Inflamed mixes medicine, argument, and metaphor into a post-pandemic poultice: reading it is the first step in the deep medicine it prescribes. What a rare and powerful experience to feel a book in your very body." --Naomi Klein, author of On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal "A critique of the wreckage of capitalism and colonialism for our time--beautifully written, storytelling at its best. This book can change your life." --Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
Dr. Rupa Marya is a physician, an activist, a mother, and a composer. She is an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where she practices and teaches internal medicine. She is also a cofounder of the Do No Harm Coalition, and at the invitation of Lakota health leaders, she is helping to set up the Mni Wiconi Health Clinic and Farm at Standing Rock in order to decolonize medicine and food.
Raj Patel is a research professor at the University of Texas at Austin's Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, a professor in the university's department of nutrition, and a research associate at Rhodes University, South Africa. He is the author of Stuffed and Starved and the New York Times bestselling The Value of Nothing, and coauthor of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. A James Beard Leadership Award winner, he is completing a film on the global food system, and is a leading thinker and organizer around the Green New Deal. He serves on the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, and has advised governments on causes and solutions to crises of sustainability worldwide.
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