This book presents a health ethnology of health literacy among vulnerable groups. The social dimension of health and health literacy, which can hardly be conceptualized in the individualistic competence-theoretical approaches, is particularly clearly highlighted.

On the necessity and meaningfulness of a health ethnological perspective in health literacy research.- Health literacy in the context of health inequalities - a framing and a research overview.- Health literacy in childhood and adolescence and family health literacy.- Health literacy of adolescents and families from a health ethnological perspective. A theoretical framing.- The ethnographic exploration of health literacy: notes on methodology.- Health literacy of refugee male adolescents from Afghanistan and the exploration of existing scope for action.- What do you see when you look differently? On the insight potential of ethnographic health literacy research.

This book presents a health ethnology of health literacy among vulnerable groups. In addition to a comprehensive state of research and the development of a theory-oriented health literacy research, three case studies on vulnerable minorities from Germany and Switzerland are presented. The social dimension of health and health literacy, which can hardly be conceptualized in individualistic competence-theoretical approaches, is particularly clearly highlighted.This book is a translation of the original German 1st edition Health Literacy aus gesundheitsethnologischer Perspektive by Uwe H. Bittlingmayer, published by Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature in 2020. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.The authorsDr. Uwe H. Bittlingmayer is Professor of Sociology at the Freiburg University of Education.Dr. Zeynep Islertas and Elias Sahrai are research associates in the BMBF research consortium  Health Literacy in Childhood and Adolescence at the Institute of Sociology at the Freiburg University of Education.Dr. Stefanie Harsch is a postdoctoral researcher in the BMBF-funded Global Health project focusing on cancer literacy in Sub-Saharan Africa at the University of Freiburg.Dr. Isabella Bertschi is a research and teaching associate at the Department of Clinical Psychology of the University of Zurich with a focus on children/adolescents and couples/families.Dr. Diana Sahrai is Professor of Educational Science with a focus on child development & pedagogy at the Freiburg University of Education