Sociological Theory and Studying
Sociology
Defining Health and Medicine
 WHO’s definition of Health:
 A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and
not merely an absence of disease, or infirmity.
 Medicine: “The Greatest Benefit to Mankind”
 Hippocrates- “The art has three factors, the disease, the
patient, the physician.”
The difference
 Medical Sociology is divided into two subfields with some
differences:
 Sociology of Medicine
 Sociology in Medicine
Differentiation
 Sociology of Medicine
 Sociology in Medicine
 Social Epidemiology
 Sociology of Health and other subsequent fields
Theoretical Perspectives
 Structural Functionalism, Conflict Theory, Feminist and
Symbolic Interactionism:
 Review of basic premises
 Functionalism: the influence of the rest of society on
individual health patterns and status.
 Durkheim and social processes
 Being constrained by laws and customs of society.
 Durkheim’s suicide- handout
Durkheim’s suicide
 Egoistic: people are detached from society and are suddenly




on their own, overwhelmed by stress
Anomic: people suffer a sudden dislocation of normative
systems where their norms and values are no longer relevant
Altruistic: people feel themselves so strongly integrated into
a demanding society that their only escape seems to be
suicide
Fatalistic: people kills themselves because their situation is
hopeless-not developed by Durkheim
Examples for each?
Functionalism cont...
 Brenner’s study of heart disease, stoke and kidney failure
 Thesis: there are few areas of our lives not intimately affected




by the state of economy.
Heart attacks and recession
Stress causes exposure to risk factors associated with these
particular health phenomenon.
Rates of employment and mental hospital admissions
The provocation hypothesis and the uncovering hypothesis as
explanations for his findings.
Conflict Theory
 Text: the unequal social arrangements and racialization




present in our society and others.
Power differences present in society and the structures
within society.
The main focus is on stratification and power struggles for
those who are considered “proletariats.”
Access to medical care and medicine
The term medicalization- definition
Medicalization and Capitalism
 Medicalization: the process that defines a condition or




activity as a disease or an illness; treatment of the conditions
is then considered the responsibility of the medical
professional.
The notion of social control in Conflict theory and in the
process of medicalization
Article “Medicalization and Social Control”
The definition of medicalization- too many variations and no
concrete definition available.
The social factors responsible for part of the medicalization
process
Factors contributing to Medicalization
 Secularization
 The Medical Profession
 Social Control Durkheim, Parsons, and other theorists- an issue of power
Consequences of Medicalization
 Assumption of medical moral neutrality
 Domination by experts
 Individualization of social problems
 Depoliticization of behaviour
 Dislocation of responsibility
 Using powerful technologies
 The “exclusion of evil.”
Feminist Theories
 The oppression of women in the medical profession
 The oppression of women as objects of medical practice
 Midwifery a good example
Symbolic Interactionism
 Cooley, Thomas and Goffman
 Micro level perspective and all focus on interactions and
behaviours of individuals.
 The theory of the looking-glass self
 The basic components of the theory:
 We see ourselves in our imagination as we think we appear to
the other person
 We see in our imagination the other person’s judgment of our
appearance.
 As a result of what we see in our imagination about how we are
viewed by the other person, we experience some sort of selffeeling, such as pride or humiliation.
SI Theory Cont...
 Thomas and the definition of the situation
 The same crisis will not produce the same effect uniformly in




all people.
Crises lie in the interaction between a situation and a
person’s capacities to meet it.
Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis- life as a theatre
We live in worlds of social encounter in which we act out a
line of behaviour- our scripts.
The maintenance of face is a condition of interaction.
Critical Race Theories
 The relation to the body being different for those of different




races and ethnicities.
The role of differentiation and inequality in medicine for
those of different races/ethnicities.
The article “Describing the White Ethnic Group.”
Stark differences in life expectancy and morbidity rates.
Social group differences in terms of support and buffering of
stress.
Post-Modernist Thinking
 There is no truth to our claims and there is no way to get to
truth
 All arguments are opinion based and follow rules of
discourse to attain truth.
 Discourse of Medical profession and the “The Birth of the
Clinic”
 The Body and medical profession’s labelling of disease
Methodology in Sociology of Medicine
 Based on the theoretical orientation
 Functionalists and Conflict theorists can use either
quantitative or qualitative methods.
 Same is said for most theoretical frameworks
 SI and Post Modernists focus on interactions and use mainly
qualitative and content analyses for their methdologies.