A comparative European overview focusing upon the main areas of social construction as it relates to health and illness; including an emphasis upon lay beliefs and the different way understandings of health can impact upon health behaviour, examining health knowledge and the interaction and comparison between lay and professional knowledge systems.

Contents: Introduction, Ian Shaw and Kaisa Kauppinen; The work of pathologists: visualization of disease and control of uncertainty, Elianne Riska; Constructing risk: rumour as a resource for medical sociology, Ian Shaw and Louise Woodward; Lay understandings of health: a qualitative study, Sara O'Sullivan and Anne Stakelum; Self-rated health in Moscow and Helsinki, Hannele Palosuo; Pragmatism, globalism and culturalism: health pluralism of Chinese people in Britain, Ruby C.M Chau and Sam W.K.Yu; Shifting views of depression: analysing people's accounts of their suffering, Ilka Kangas; The construction of lay resistance to vaccination, Pru Hobson-West; Pain, loss and collective action: health consumer groups and the policy process, Judith Allsop, Kathryn Jones and Rob Baggott; The medicalization of unhappiness? The management of mental distress in primary care, Ian Shaw and Louise Woodward; Index.