This month we have five copies of the Winner of the 2019 Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness Book Prize, Infectious Change: Reinventing Chinese Public Health after an Epidemic by Katherine A Mason to give away.

In February 2003, a Chinese physician crossed the border between mainland China and Hong Kong, spreading Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)—a novel flu-like virus—to over a dozen international hotel guests. SARS went on to kill about 800 people and sicken 8,000 worldwide. By July 2003 the disease had disappeared, but it left an indelible change on public health in China. The Chinese public health system, once famous for its grassroots, low-technology approach, was transformed into a globally-oriented, research-based, scientific endeavor.

In Infectious Change, Katherine A. Mason investigates local Chinese public health institutions in Southeastern China, examining how the outbreak of SARS re-imagined public health as a professionalized, biomedicalized, and technological machine—one that frequently failed to serve the Chinese people. Mason recounts the rapid transformation as young, highly-trained biomedical scientists flooded into local public health institutions, replacing bureaucratic government inspectors who had dominated the field for decades. Infectious Change grapples with how public health in China was reinvented into a prestigious profession in which global impact and recognition were paramount—and service to vulnerable local communities was secondary.

If you are interested in receiving one of these free copies, please email BSA Membership by Friday, 18 October 2019 with your name and postal address and we will pick five winners at random. Please note that you must be a BSA member to enter this book draw. If you aren’t a member and would like to find out how to become one and see what other benefits are available to you, please visit the Membership section on the BSA website.

Thank you to everyone that entered our last book giveaway for Social Mobility for the 21st Century: Everyone a Winner? by Steph Lawler and Geoff Payne. We had a great amount of interest in the book and are pleased to announce that the five winners were Rachel Hale, Richard Lampard, Tom O’Brien, Georgia Philip and Emma Procter and they have all been notified. Congratulations to you all.