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Winner, 2022 Donald W. Light Award for Applied Medical Sociology, given by the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological AssociationWinner, 2021 Robert K. Merton Book Award, given by the Science, Knowledge, and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association2021 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice MagazineExplores the social inequality of clinical drug testing and its effects on scientific resultsImagine that you volunteer for the clinical trial of an experimental drug. The only direct benefit of participating is that you will receive up to $5,175. You must spend twenty nights literally locked in a research facility. You will be told what to eat, when to eat, and when to sleep. You will share a bedroom with several strangers. Who are you, and why would you choose to take part in this kind of study? This book explores the hidden world of pharmaceutical testing on healthy volunteers. Drawing on two years of fieldwork in clinics across the country and 268 interviews with participants and staff, it illustrates how decisions to take part in such studies are often influenced by poverty and lack of employment opportunities. It shows that healthy participants are typically recruited from African American and Latino/a communities, and that they are often serial participants, who obtain a significant portion of their income from these trials. This book reveals not only how social inequality fundamentally shapes these drug trials, but it also depicts the important validity concerns inherent in this mode of testing new pharmaceuticals. These highly controlled studies bear little resemblance to real-world conditions, and everyone involved is incentivized to game the system, ultimately making new drugs appear safer than they really are. Adverse Events provides an unprecedented view of the intersection of racial inequalities with pharmaceutical testing, signaling the dangers of this research enterprise to both social justice and public health.

How does contemporary science contribute to our understanding about what it means to be women or men? What are the social implications of scientific claims about differences between'male'and'female'brains, hormones, and genes? How does culture influence scientific and medical research and its findings about human sexuality, especially so-called normal and deviant desires and behaviors? Gender and the Science of Difference examines how contemporary science shapes and is shaped by gender ideals and images. Prior scholarship has illustrated how past cultures of science were infused with patriarchal norms and values that influenced the kinds of research that was conducted and the interpretation of findings about differences between men and women. This interdisciplinary volume presents empirical inquiries into today's science, including examples of gendered scientific inquiry and medical interventions and research. It analyzes how scientific and medical knowledge produces gender norms through an emphasis on sex differences, and includes both U.S. and non-U.S. cases and examples.

Images of violent black masculinity are not new in American culture, but in the late 1980s and early'90s, the social and economic climate in the country contributed to an unprecedented number of films about ghetto life. And while Hollywood reaped financial gains from these depictions, the rest of the country saw an ever widening'opportunity gap'between marginalized groups and mainstream society, as well as an increase in juvenile violence. These events added to the existing discomfort of the viewing public with representations of young black males living in urban ghettos.Black on Black: Urban Youth Films and the Multicultural Audience tackles the under-examined subject of black, male-focused, coming-of-age films in American society. Of central concern is an analysis of responses made by culturally diverse young adults to selected'Hood'films of the early 1990s. Grounded in Reader-Response Theory and utilizing qualitative research design and analysis, author Celeste Fisher examines student interpretations of three representative films of the period: Boyz N the Hood, Juice and Menace II Society. This book provides insight into how meaning is made by a multicultural audience in response to a particularly controversial representation of'Blackness'in American society. Developed to make sense of the violence that accompanied the screenings of some Hood films, this research provides a greater understanding of how such films are interpreted. Black on Black is suitable for scholars and students interested in the subject, as well as for anyone interested in film, race, multiculturalism, and identity politics.