Howard Waitzkin
Intellectual for the Disadvantaged
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2559955 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Meei-Shia Chen (University of Chicago, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1998 |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 4 |
| Publication date | 1998-03-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Health and Social Behavior (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-1465 • E-ISSN: 2150-6000 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2676385 |
| PMID | 9575700 |
| OpenAlex | W2313454593 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
The French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre once said that to be an intellectual, one has to be in the midst of the struggle of the toiling masses: to be a part of the oppressed, to work for their causes, to link up with the sufferings, visions, and actions of the peasantry, the proletariat, the indigenous peoples, the colonized peoples, et cetera. Few can meet Sartre's definition, but in three decades as a social scientist, doctor, and public health advocate, Howard Waitzkin has made a valiant attempt. He is truly an intellectual for the disadvantaged. Howard Waitzkin's long-standing academic as well as political commitment to the causes and the suffering of the oppressed stemmed from a personal experience which demonstrated the painfully social nature of illness in modem society: the death of his grandfather, to whom he dedicated his second book, The Second Sickness: Contradictions of Capitalist Health Care (1983). Abe Waitzkin was a house-painter and union organizer in Ohio who died tragically of liver cancer brought on by toxic solvents used to thin paint. Ironically, though Abe's union had requested govemmental monitoring of the very chemicals that killed him, the request had gone unheeded. As Abe was dying, his doctors trapped him in a web of lies and distortions which left him confused and dispirited. While most Americans view familial tragedies as isolated cases of bad luck, Howard's early sociological imagination allowed him to recognize the death of his beloved grandfather for what it was: a rather typical manifestation of the contradictions and inequalities which inhere in the capitalist system of production and distribution
Bourgeoisie · Criminology · Disadvantaged · Indigenous · Luck · Political science · Politics · Proletariat · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Theology · Vision · Anthropology · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Public Health Policies and Education
| Citations per year | 0.04 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2003 - 2003 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |