Sociology of health and illness

Aннотация:
The aims of the course are to provide students with a thorough grounding in the sociology of health and illness, including key debates on the biomedical model and the social construction of medical power/knowledge; the relationship between social structure and health (principally by class, gender and ethnicity); lay concepts, images and experiences of health and illness; the nature and status of professional power and dominance; and the challenges and uncertainties, dilemmas and contradiction of medicine and health care in the twenty-first century. Throughout the module, the relationship between theory and evidence is stressed, alongside newly emerging issues surrounding the body and risk in late/postmodernity. In these and other ways, a balanced assessment is provided of the sociology of health and illness, and the place and function of sociological critiques in the `academic encirclement’ of medicine.