This article illuminates discursive constructions of large bodies in contemporary society and discusses what discursive approaches might add to health care. Today, the World Health Organization describes a current "epidemic of obesity" and classifies large bodies as a medical condition. Texts on the obesity epidemic often draw upon alarming perspectives that involve associations of threat and c...

Introduction. Along with the general transformation in human–animal relations in Western societies, the roles and meanings of the horse have changed significantly during the modernization and urbanization process. In the 1950s in Finland, the agrarian society still used as many as 400,000 horses in agriculture, forestry, transportation, trotting races, and the military. After a dramatic collaps...

In the contemporary context of zoonosis emergence and spread, invasive species are a major issue since they represent potential pathogen hosts. Even though many progresses have been done to understand and predict spatial patterns of invasive species, the challenge to identify the underlying determinants of their distribution remains a central question in invasion biology. This is particularly e...

Several concepts are available to indicate the type of society that evolves under the influence of the use of information and communication technology. The most popular concept is the information society. In this book that concept is used in combination with the concept network society to typify contemporary developed and modern societies marked by a high level of information exchange and use o...

In recent years, health has seen changes in its global dynamics. The historical stage opened as of the emergence of globalization radically modified two constitutive aspects of human societies from their first expressions: time and space. Crucial aspects that organizations of human beings have taken into account to define their own agendas, fulfill their objectives, and meet their needs. The ch...

This article analyzes the major characteristics of modernity, of modern civilization; the major analytical approaches related to the major social structures and the contemporary state. The core of this analysis is the notion of multiple modernities. This idea assumes that the best way to understand the contemporary world is for modernity to be seen as a story of continual formation, constitutio...