Sickness, Health, and the Politics of Well Being in Harlem, New York, during the Interwar Period (2005)
Wilson, Jamie Jaywann (Author)
New York University
Bender, Thomas
Edition Details: Advisor: Bender, Thomas
Physical Details: 241 pp.
Language: English
This dissertation examines Harlem, New York, during the interwar period using the lens of health and well being. It explores how medical and political authorities and Harlem's general population interpreted and responded to health issues as well as the implications of these responses for the well being of the community. I propose that the desire to improve and maintain health and well being was endemic to community institution building and Harlem interwar politics. This desire and subsequent work placed Harlem at the center of local, city-wide, and nation-wide policies wherein cross-cutting forms of power and exclusion shaped and constrained health and wellness options while limiting avenues to fundamentally improve wellness options. The political and economic structures of New York City and the United States, however, were porous and allowed for efforts at the local level. In fact, a broad sense of well being encouraged residents to join organizational and political movements, participate in interracial collaboration, and make individual efforts to improve and achieve public health gains, revealing agency in shaping public resources available to Harlem. But the political economy limited these gains making them fall significantly short of documented needs. This study moves beyond a singular perception of health defined by empirical germ theory based ideas. Such a perspective is too limiting, and fails to allow for a full understanding of the economic, emotional, physical, and spiritual needs that determined the quality of life of individuals and the community at large. By placing health issues, and by extension issues of life and death itself, at the center of political debates and institutional building in Harlem and New York City, this study provides an alternative approach to both politics and everyday living conditions of black communities in the urban North during the period between the two World Wars.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 66/04 (2005): 1463. UMI pub. no. 3170888.
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