Search results
Before discussing these perspectives, we must first define three key concepts—health, medicine, and health care—that lie at the heart of their explanations and of this chapter’s discussion. Health refers to the extent of a person’s physical, mental, and social well-being.
- 13.2 Global Aspects of Health and Health Care
Health Care in Industrial Nations. Industrial nations...
- Chapter 13: Health and Health Care
In saying that our social backgrounds affect our health,...
- 13.2 Global Aspects of Health and Health Care
The sociology of health and illness studies the interaction between society and health. In particular, sociologists examine how social life impacts morbidity and mortality rates and how morbidity and mortality rates impact society. This discipline also looks at health and illness in relation to social institutions such as the family, work ...
A field of sociology concerned with the social dimensions of health and illness, it covers three main areas: namely, the conceptualization of health and illness; the study of their measurement and social distribution; and the explanation of patterns of health and illness.
According to theorists working in the symbolic interactionist perspective, health and illness are socially constructed. Symbolic interactionist researchers investigate how people create meaning during social interaction, how they present and construct the self (or “identity”), and how they define situations of co-presence with others.
- INTRODUCTION
- Sociology, Genetics, Social Mobility and Lifestyle
- ABORIGINALITY, LIFESTYLE AND GENETICS – OBSCURING SOCIAL PROCESSES
- The Sociological Perspective
- MODERN SOCIETY MAY HAVE CHANGED – BUT KEY SOCIAL STRUCTURES PERSIST
- Sociological Approaches to Health and Illness
- Political Economy and Marxist Approaches
- Parsonian Sociology of Health
- Foucault’s Sociology of Health
- Feminist Approaches
- Bringing the Approaches Together
- SOCIOLOGY, SCIENCE AND MEDICINE
- Summary
- Discussion Questions
{{ Diseases are socially produced and distributed – they are not just a part of nature or biology. {{ The key variables shaping the production and distribution of diseases are class, gender and ethnicity, and the ways in which professional groups define conditions as diseases. {{ Medical knowledge is not purely scientific, but shapes and is shaped ...
Sociologists argue that our understanding of the social production of disease is not helped by explanations: that focus solely on genetics at the expense of the social environment; that claim that the sick are poor because they experience downward social mobility; that fail to recognize that lifestyle choices are shaped by social factors. In our da...
In Australia, it is claimed that Aboriginal people have higher rates of diabetes because they freely choose bad Western foods such as potato chips, soft drinks and alcohol, for which they are genetically not ‘programmed’. Thus their health problems read as the following equation. They choose poor foods (therefore it is their fault) + they are genet...
Sociologists, on the basis of empirical research, demonstrate how the interactions of class, of professional interests, of power, of gender and of ethnicity enter into the formation of knowledge about and treatment of a sickness or disease. They dem-onstrate the social production and distribution of diseases and illnesses. Sociologists show how dis...
It is the argument of this book that there is little evidence that social structures of class and gender, of ethnicity and of inequality have stopped shaping people’s lives. Industrial capitalism may have changed its appearance, and patriarchy may no longer be the bulwark of women’s oppression, but they both still structure health and illness, and ...
Different sociological perspectives on society give rise to different accounts of the role of medical knowledge, and of the social causes of disease. They are also based in different sociological models of society, in part complementary, in part contradictory. Marxist approaches emphasize the causal role of economics in the production and distribut...
Researchers in the materialist and Marxist traditions have produced one of the most powerful sociological accounts of the production of disease and its social pattern of distribution. These approaches emphasize the determining role of eco-nomic interests in both producing disease and in shaping the way it is dealt with. Marxists argue that medicine...
An alternative analysis of medicine is provided by Talcott Parsons, who argued that modern societies, while having a capitalist economy, have noncapitalist social struc-tures. He argues that the medical profession is one such structure. Medical professionals are motivated by factors other than making money, such as caring for their patients. They p...
It is with the development of the category of disease – the product of the professionalization of medicine – that Foucault is concerned. Michel Foucault calls attention to another important aspect of modern society: it is an admin-istered society, in which professional groups define categories of people – the sick, the insane, the criminal, the dev...
It is the case that the Marxists overlook the ways in which contemporary life is not always shaped by economic factors; that Parsons does not go very far in document-ing the ‘strains’ of social life; and that for all his interest in bodies, Foucault does not discuss gender. Feminist sociology seeks to extend and develop especially Marxist and Fouca...
There is no definitive cause of inequality in health and in the patterns of disease distribution. Class, patriarchy and bureaucratic and professional surveillance inter-mingle with each other in shaping the contents of medical knowledge and the individual’s experience of health and disease. In addition to class and gender, as a result of the massiv...
The assumption that unifies sociological accounts of sickness and disease is a rejection of behaviourism, the claim that we passively respond to environmental factors, as a model for human action. Health and disease are cultural products, and individuals as social agents react to, transform and are shaped by the experiences of health and disease. T...
The ‘commonsense’ understandings of the cause of disease portrayed in our culture – especially the idea that lifestyles are freely chosen – individualizes and obscures the way in which disease is socially produced. The commonsense understanding of medicine as the application of ‘objective’ ‘scientific’ knowledge to a purely biological body obscures...
Different theories of society produce different accounts of the role of medicine in modern society. Compare and contrast two of the theories outlined in this chapter. What does it mean when sociologists argue that diseases are social products and not just biological facts? Can you think of conditions that were once thought of as normal but now requ...
- 355KB
- 15
19.1. The Social Construction of Health. Define the term medical sociology. Understand the difference between the cultural meaning of illness, the social construction of illness, and the social construction of medical knowledge. 19.2. Global Health. Define social epidemiology.
People also ask
What is sociology & health & illness?
What is a sociological understanding of Health and health care?
What is the difference between medical sociology and sociology?
What is a major topic in medical sociology?
The Sociology of Health and Illness focuses on three areas: the conceptualization, the study of measurement and social distribution, and the justification of patterns in health and illness. By looking at these things researchers can look at different diseases through a sociological lens.
