Globalization is seen by many as an engine of growth, but in this outstanding book Youde (Univ. of Minnesota Duluth) acknowledges that it has also created significant health disparities. He examines the challenges posed by a globalized health system, including the temptation to neglect the role of gender or environmental degradation in health issues. Globalization—involving the collapse of time, space, and even national sovereignty—actually challenges global health and its governance. For example, Youde cites the case of SARS: little time was needed to spread the disease from China to Canada. Yet while global health institutions such as the WHO quickly contained the outbreak, China’s early reluctance to acknowledge or share information about it was credited to its sense that global health institutions challenged its national sovereignty. Likewise in 2006, when Indonesia refused to share samples of H5N1 influenza virus, it did so on grounds of national sovereignty. Perhaps the biggest challenge examined by Youde is the rise of populist or nationalist political regimes that do not accept a global world order. This is an excellent and useful text that deeply examines multiple issues not conventionally associated with health.Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.
