1. Sociological Theory and Studying Sociology

2. 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.”

3. The difference
Medical Sociology is divided into two subfields with some differences:
Sociology of Medicine
Sociology in Medicine

4. Differentiation Sociology of Medicine Sociology in Medicine
Social Epidemiology
Sociology of Health and other subsequent fields

5. 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

6. 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?

7. 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.

8. 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

9. 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

10. Factors contributing to Medicalization
Secularization
The Medical Profession
Social Control-
Durkheim, Parsons, and other theorists- an issue of power

11. 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.”

12. Feminist Theories The oppression of women in the medical profession
The oppression of women as objects of medical practice
Midwifery a good example

13. 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 self- feeling, such as pride or humiliation.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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

17. 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.