Health and Health Care as Social Problems

Peter Conrad, Valerie Leiter

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
• Year: 2003
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781417503452
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This engaging and accessible reader takes a social problems approach to health and medicine, providing a broad and critical lens on contemporary health problems. Designed for courses on social problems and on medical sociology, the volume embraces two fundamental principles: that health and illness are at least partly socially produced, and that health care is not an unfettered good and often brings with it serious social problems. The volume is organized into six sections, addressing the medicalization of human problems; the social construction of health problems; social movements; gender; race and class and the provision of health care; and medical accountability. Taken together, the essays demonstrate the depth and richness of a social problems approach to health and medicine, and the critical perspective it brings to our understanding of health and illness in U.S. society.

Table of contents

• UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL PROBLEMS: AN SSSP PRESIDENTIAL SERIES
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part I - MEDICALIZATION
• PART II - SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF HEALTH PROBLEMS
• Part III - SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
• PART IV - GENDER
• PART V - RACE, CLASS, AND HEALTH CARE
• Part VI - MEDICAL ACCOUNTABILITY
• Sources
• Index
• About the Editors