1. Chapter 5
The Social Meanings of Illness

2. Chapter Overview Explaining Illness Across History Models of Illness
Medicine as Social Control

3. Competing Models of Illness
Medical Model:
Sociological Model:
Illness is an objective label
Illness is a subjective category
Illness is a non-moral label
Illness is a moral category
Illness is an apolitical label.
Illness is a political label.

4. Competing Models of Illness:
Medical Model:
Sociological Model:
Illness is concrete, unchanging reality recognized by all informed observers agree
Illness is a social construction
Each illness has specific, universally recognizable, features, so diagnosis is objective and consistent
Illness is neither specific nor universally recognized, so diagnosis is subjective and culturally bound
Each illness is caused by unique biological forces
Each illness is caused by social, psychological, and biological factors

5. Medicine as an Institution
The world and culture of doctors
The economic, social, and political underpinnings of that world

6. Medicine as an Institution of Social Control
Three examples:
Medicalization
The Human Genome Project
The Sick Role

7. Medicalization and Social Control
Process of identifying a condition as medical problem requiring a medical solution and
Process of broadening the definition of an illness

8. Medicalization can gain support from:
Doctors
Consumer groups
Pharmaceutical companies
Managed care organizations

9. Consequences of Medicalization
Promotes social awareness of a problem
Unintended negative consequences
Increases power of doctors
Decreases power of other social authorities
Medical treatment deemed only logical solution
Depoliticalization
Used to justify voluntary and involuntary treatment
Counter-pressures toward demedicalization

10. The Human Genome Project and Social Control
Benefits
Understand one’s own risks
Prevent future disease
Reduce anxieties
Problems
Increases anxieties, especially since offers only partial information
Potential for discrimination
Potential for genetic/eugenic control

11. The Sick Role and Social Control
Talcott Parsons:
Functionalist analysis: Illness as deviance
The sick role summarizes social expectations regarding:
How society should view the sick
How the sick should behave

12. The Sick Role According to Parsons, society assumes that:
Illness is a legitimate reason for not fulfilling normal role
Illness is beyond person’s control
Sick person must work to get well
Sick person must follow medical advice
These four expectations = The Sick Role

13. Critique of the Sick Role Model
According to conflict theorists:
Deviance is necessary for social change
Studying social control agents important
Sick role model
Doesn’t fit chronic or stigmatized conditions
Ignores class, age, gender, race
Confuses illness with patienthood