The Sociology of Health and Illness

Critical Perspectives

Peter Conrad, Valerie Leiter

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781071850824
• Edition: 11
• eBook ISBN:
  9781071850817
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This anthology for Medical Sociology courses, is edited by two leading experts in the field. It brings together readings from the scholarly literature on health, medicine, and health care, covering some of the most timely health issues of our day, including eating disorders, the effects of inequality on health, how race, class, and gender affect health outcomes, the health politics of asthma, the effects of health care reform, the pharmaceutical industry, health information on the Internet, and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Brief Contents
• Detailed Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I The Social Production of Disease and Meanings of Illness
• 1 Medical Measures and the Decline of Mortality
• 2 Social Conditions as Fundamental Causes of Health Inequalities Theory, Evidence, and Practice
• 3 Social Class, Susceptibility, and Sickness
• 4 Racism and Health Pathways and Scientific Evidence
• 5 Sex, Gender, and Vulnerability
• 6 Health Inequalities in Global Context
• 7 A Case for Refocusing Upstream The Political Economy of Illness
• 8 Social Relationships and Health
• 9 Dying Alone The Social Production of Urban Isolation
• 10 Morality and Health News Media Constructions of Overweight and Eating Disorders
• 11 Like a Fish Out of Water Managing Chronic Pain in the Urban Safety Net
• 12 Whose Deaths Matter? Mortality, Advocacy, and Attention to Disease in the Mass Media*
• 13 Electronic Support Groups, Patient-Consumers, and Medicalization The Case of Contested Illness
• 14 The Meaning of Medications Another Look at Compliance
• Part II The Social Organization of Medical Care
• 15 Professionalization, Monopoly, and the Structure of Medical Practice
• 16 Notes on the Decline of Midwives and the Rise of Medical Obstetricians
• 17 The End of the Golden Age of Doctoring
• 18 A Caring Dilemma Womanhood and Nursing in Historical Perspective
• 19 SuperNurse? Troubling the Hero Discourse in COVID Times
• 20 Becoming a Complementary Health Practitioner The Construction of Alternative Medical Knowledge
• 21 From Lydia Pinkham to Queen Levitra Direct-to-Consumer Advertising and Medicalisation
• 22 Prescriptions and Proscriptions Moralising Sleep Medicines
• 23 Vaccine Refusal and Pharmaceutical Acquiescence Parental Control and Ambivalence in Managing Children’s Health
• 24 Paying for Health Care
• 25 The Origins of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
• 26 The Struggle Between the Voice of Medicine and the Voice of the Lifeworld
• 27 Cultural Brokerage Creating Linkages Between Voices of Lifeworld and Medicine in Cross-Cultural Clinical Settings
• 28 Latina Physicians as “Essential” Workers
• 29 “Like Finding a Unicorn” Healthcare Preferences Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual People in the United States
• 30 Social Death as Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• 31 Technologies and Health Inequities
• 32 Being-In-Dialysis The Experience of the Machine–Body for Home Dialysis Users
• 33 It Just Becomes Much More Complicated Genetic Counselors’ Views on Genetics and Prenatal Testing
• Part III Contemporary Critical Debates
• 34 Risk as Moral Danger The Social and Political Functions of Risk Discourse in Public Health
• 35 Lay Pharmacovigilance and the Dramatization of Risk Fluoroquinolone Harm on YouTube
• 36 Risk society online Zika Virus, Social Media, and Distrust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• 37 The Shifting Engines of Medicalization
• 38 The Best Laid Plans? Women’s Choices, Expectations and Experiences in Childbirth
• 39 C-section Epidemic
• Part IV Expanding Health and Health Care
• 40 Illness and the Internet From Private to Public Experience
• 41 Collective self-experimentation in patient-led research How Online Health Communities Foster Innovation
• 42 “It’s Like Having a Physician in Your Pocket!” A Critical Analysis of Self-Diagnosis Smartphone Apps
• 43 COVID-19 as Eco-pandemic Injustice Opportunities for Collective and Antiracist Approaches to Environmental Health
• 44 Politicizing Health Care