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The teacher-student relationship may represent, in certain situations, the key of achieving didactic activities. Those, if carried out during the appropriate pedagogical time (course and / or seminar) could determine the existence of a new psycho-pedagogical attitude and behavior, aiming primarily at the teaching-learning method, but also the interactive participation and co-participation of the two actors directly involved in this stimulus-creative approach. In this context, the existence of applicative exercises/play in certain disciplines in socio-human behavior (specifically-medical psychology, medical sociology, doctor-patient communication) determines but also valorizes a new educational behavior, namely, teacher-student communication and interrelation vs student-teacher. Thus, by catching the student's attention, stimulating his / her thinking, imagination and volitional-emotional values we can make educational sequences that also enhance "freshmen" experience from year I, building up and defining the whole experience in VIth year, in most cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The birth of medical sociology is often traced back to the 1950's. During this time, sociologists who were interested in medicine began forging relationships with physicians to develop research projects that often took place in hospitals (Bradby 2012; Hollingshead 1973). As such, much of the early work in medical sociology centered the role of physicians in healthcare and largely overlooked other healthcare providers such registered nurses (RNs), nurse practitioners (NPs), and other auxiliary workers. Although the purview of medical sociology has swelled, medical sociologists' fixation on physicians has remained stable over the years, and there is a dearth of research on healthcare professionals who are not physicians. The aim of this paper is to explore the field of nursing through a sociological lens, focusing on the obstacles nurses have faced in the pursuit of professionalization. I begin with an overview of the classical theories of professions (i.e. Abbott and Freidson) as well as a feminist critique of this body of work. I then cover the empirical literature on nursing and the professions and provide a brief overview of the gendered history of healthcare. This highlights the historical processes that have shaped the differential statuses and jurisdictions in medicine and nursing that have led to the crystallization of male privilege in theory and practice. I then discuss the structural and cultural constraints on nursing as an occupation, and nurses' responses to these constraints. Lastly, I review the limitation of this work, opportunities for research and provide concluding remarks. This paper builds on both medical sociology and the sociology of work and professions literatures and addresses calls to explore how the changing nature of medical work impacts occupational groups, and how white male privilege has led to social closure in healthcare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Service learning in higher education has a well-documented and robust history in expanding outcomes and experiences for both students and community organization. This research paper discusses a case study of a service learning project where undergraduate students in an independent study, following a semester in a Medical Sociology course, assisted a local hospital as it transitioned to "Baby-Friendly" status. Five students performed a variety of duties, including data entry and analysis, creating data collection tools, and interviewing staff and patients about hospital experiences. The goals of the project on the students' end were to provide experience in a career setting, encourage students to problem solve, and encourage independent connections with non-academic supervisors. The hospital benefitted from having students perform interviews with patients and staff, develop an interview tool, and develop a global spreadsheet to collect, organize, and analyze data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pediatric practitioners are America's foremost medico-scientific authorities on children and childhood. Yet, few studies have investigated how pediatric providers define childhood and describe the natures of children. Based on a large ethnographic study at a top-ranked children's hospital on the West Coast of the United States, which included semi-structured interviews with twenty-five medical doctors and nurse practitioners, this paper examines how pediatric providers construct childhood. Drawing on two robust, but disparate, literatures - childhood studies and medical sociology - this paper poses a theoretical question: how does the authority of children measure up to medical authority? Interview data show that pediatric providers subscribe to popular sociocultural beliefs that children are innocent, vulnerable, emotional, optimistic, energetic, and resilient and that childhood should be a time of exploration, learning, and fun. Providers cite children's perceived helplessness, lack of logic, reason, and cognitive understanding as they advocate for quality healthcare for all children. I argue that how practitioners define childhood is central to how they construct pediatric medicine as a medical specialty. What pediatricians tell us about children reflects how they perceive themselves as medical authorities and caretakers of children. How practitioners construct childhood is central to their call for social justice and healthcare access, but, ultimately and ironically, undermines childhood agency, autonomy, and authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common goal in undergraduate sociology courses is to develop students' capacity to interpret social processes sociologically, that is, to develop a perspective sometimes referred to as the "sociological eye" or "sociological imagination." While it has been suggested that teaching students to conduct ethnography might be a compelling pedagogical tool for achieving this goal, an essential problem of evaluation persists; the intrinsically subjective nature of conducting ethnography makes it hard to evaluate how students develop the ability to interpret social processes within and across social venues. Quantitative and qualitative data on students' processes of learning to see, and the degree of uncertainty demonstrated in their observations (as measured in the use of hedges), were collected in three waves across a two-semester medical sociology sequence beginning in the classroom and ending in the hospital. In each of these three waves of data collection, students analyzed social interactions in three short videos that each represented social processes with which they had varying degrees of familiarity: a high school routine, the medical school socialization process, and an encounter between indigenous tribesmen and an outsider. Students showed the most similarity in their learning processes when they analyzed the venue most unfamiliar to them. We conclude that the processes by which students learn to see, as well as the degree to which they become certain about the validity of their observations, are guided by their familiarity with the venue under analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past theory and research in medical sociology has frequently focused on the association between financial strain and physical health across the life course. However, the direction of effect between these two variables is still unclear. We help to clarify the relationship between these variables by conduction formal tests to identify the leading indicator in two independent samples of mid- and later life adults. Results from both samples provide some evidence that financial strain is the leading indicator. We find no evidence that physical health is the leading indicator or that this association is completely bidirectional. Implications for theory and future directions for research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grounded Theory (GT) has proved an extremely useful research approach in several fields including medical sociology, nursing, education and management theory. However, GT is a complex method based on an inductive paradigm that is fundamentally different from the traditional hypothetico-deductive research model. As there are at least three variants of GT, some ostensibly GT research suffers from method slurring, where researchers adopt an arbitrary subset of GT practices that are not recognizable as GT. In this paper, we describe the variants of GT and identify the core set of GT practices. We then analyze the use of grounded theory in software engineering. We carefully and systematically selected 98 articles that mention GT, of which 52 explicitly claim to use GT, with the other 46 using GT techniques only. Only 16 articles provide detailed accounts of their research procedures. We offer guidelines to improve the quality of both conducting and reporting GT studies. The latter is an important extension since current GT guidelines in software engineering do not cover the reporting process, despite good reporting being necessary for evaluating a study and informing subsequent research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At Full Truth Calvary Church, members strictly reject modern medicine, avoid prescription glasses, and even seatbelts, refuse to take on debt, buy insurance, or even actively apply for jobs. All of these behaviors are seen as engaging in the "self-life," or a way of living that privileges ones' own will over God's. Using data from more than 20 months of ethnographic research at Full Truth, this paper focuses on the most pervasive and commonly held of these behaviors among Full Truth members - their insistence that the use of any modern medicine is a failure of faith. I show that their rejection of modern medicine serves to reinforce group boundaries and identity, and creates a vital congregation. As a group that is not very engaged with "the world," via proselytization or politics (indeed, they eschew both), these findings demonstrate the ways in which fundamentalist religious groups can generate tension with the outside world without much active engagement - an important addendum to subcultural identity theory (Smith 1998). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonprofit organizations are a large and growing sector in the United States and span a diverse array of fields including education, youth development, employment, healthcare, and the arts. Yet little is understood concerning their impacts in the lives of individuals. Since nonprofits are often explicitly oriented toward building and helping communities, they should be associated with increased wellbeing on the part of citizens. This study explores whether communities with higher numbers of nonprofits per capita exhibit greater social well-being in the form of more positive relationships, emotions, and engagement and fewer negative relationships, negative emotions, and disengagement. We use novel measures of social well-being -- positive and negative tweets in a county -- and relate them to per capita nonprofits in relevant fields, such as the arts, derived from the National Center for Charitable Statistics. We find that most categories of nonprofit organizations (e.g., education, recreation/sports, and human services) decrease the expression of negative emotions, negative sentiments about relationships, and disengagement on Twitter. A few categories of nonprofits, those focused on the arts, education, philanthropy, and the environment, also increase the proportion of tweets in a county that indicate engagement and positive emotions. This study broadens the discussion regarding what nonprofits may be accomplishing in the communities in which they are located. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use longitudinal data from the Labor Market Health Care Project, obtained from a two-stage cluster probability sample, to examine the likelihood that workers in high poverty, predominately black neighborhoods in Mobile, Alabama will obtain and keep a "good" or "primary labor market" job over their life course where the primary labor market is defined as jobs that provide both health insurance and retirement benefits. During household interviews we collect employment history data both retrospectively and prospectively. Contrary to the stereotype that most people in poor neighborhoods do not work, over 95 percent of participants in our study have significant histories of labor force participation and employment. Survival analysis shows that approximately 64 percent workers living in our target neighborhoods will not obtain employment in the primary labor market during their lifetime. We also estimate that more than 52 percent of the workers who do make it into the "good job" labor market will exit this market into either a mediocre job or bad job before they reach retirement age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent debates on racial progress between Wimmer (2015) and Winant (2015) suffer from an under-theorization of the notion of progress. In this article, we draw on a well-known theory from medical sociology to argue that racism is a "fundamental cause" (Link and Phelan 1995; Phelan and Link 2015) of social inequality. The proximate causes of racial inequality have historically changed, but basic relations of sub- and superordination have been remarkably stable. Seeing racism as a fundamental cause allows theorists to explain both continuity and change in racial inequality better than theories that rely on an implicitly linear notion of racial progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the issues surrounding palliative care, advanced directives and lay navigators working with cancer patients. These data come from 26 face-to-face interviews with lay navigators in the Southeastern U.S. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using NVIVO software. Preliminary findings show three major themes. 1. Timing for talking about dying is delicate, 2. There is a contested terrain among professionals as to the jurisdiction of authority granted the lay navigators, vis-à-vis social workers, doctors and nurses. 3. Consistent and frequent training of lay navigators is important. This research builds upon the sociological research on death, dying, and chronic illness. In addition, the results show that the proliferation of roles in health care continues with the introduction of lay navigators, and delineating boundaries among the professions is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The moment at which a diagnosis is revealed is transformative. Putting a name to an ailment classifies it as a disease, and then links it--by virtue of the diagnosis--to a range of conventional responses, which shape attitudes towards identity, disease and even towards life itself. It is also a pivotal moment in the doctor-patient relationship. In an attempt to understand this transformative moment, I explore articles that were written by and for doctors about the disclosure of difficult diagnoses. Following Zerubavel, who asserts that social phenomena should be studied across eras, media and cultures, I have chosen to explore historical material from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century and focus particularly on how diagnostic disclosure, as described by these writers, serves as a way of promoting the profession of medicine. By studying the rationales behind these approaches we can learn much about how doctors see themselves, their patients, and their competitors; their role and the place that diagnostic knowledge played, and continues to play, in maintaining their status and authority. The historical data provides a critical approach for the sociologist to understand how diagnosis operates and its impact on understandings of health and illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of our study is to provide a up-to-date comparative analysis of the performance management practices implemented in public sector institutions in European Union countries and to identify the ones that could be successfully adapted to the public sector environment of countries which still need to put an effort into the reform and modernization of their human resources management system. Performance management practices create the connection between individual and organizational objectives and provide the necessary means to transform human resources system into a strategic partner within the organization. Our study, and particularly the analysis of the main performance management activities, have drawn upon extensive documentation regarding recent evolution of human resources practices, such as professional training, performance evaluation, motivation and career development, implemented in the civil service system of the group of countries considered for inclusion in the study. To meet current challenges, numerous EU member states have implemented actions aimed at reforming human resources management in the public sector and apply performance management principles. The challenge in implementing performance management principles consists in integrating this system with other human resources activities such as career development, promotion, learning and development, performance related pay (PRP). The success of implementing performance management largely depends on managers' capacity to properly appraise their subordinates as performance appraisal represents the main activity the performance management system. PRP represents an activity that recently has been integrated by numerous EU member states within the performance management system. However, further actions need to be taken in this area as often PRP has not reached its initial purpose and has not managed to contribute to increasing civil servants work motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Perinatal loss is the death of an infant during pregnancy or soon thereafter. A suitable approach to the parents with perinatal loss from the health professionals is essential. Parents need help and support. The aim of the study was to identify and analyze specific nursing / midwifery interventions to meet the special needs of women / parents related to perinatal loss and grief in a particular hospital in Slovakia. Methods: The sample consisted of 17 midwives employed at Louis Pasteur University Hospital in Košice, Slovakia. The data was collected from the semi-structured interviews designed to obtain information about the opinions, attitudes and experiences of midwives in the care of women with perinatal loss. We used cluster analysis and method of patterns to intercept the common traits. Results: According to the analysis of the obtained data it was determined that 16 of 17 midwives reported communication problems with the grieving women or parents. 7 of 17 midwives didn't know how to create memory boxes for the parents to take home, 11 of 17 reported problems with securing adequate environment and 13 of 17 didn't know about grief and bereavement counselling. Conclusions: The midwives have problems with securing adequate environment, supporting and guiding the grieving parents, with implementation of specific interventions in the care for women / parents, and especially problems with the communication skills of midwives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The current intensity of modernization and biomedicalization threaten environmental sustainability, human health, and the connection between these two realms. However, the link between environment and illness remains a highly contested space in need of further theoretical attention and empirical investigation. The intensification of biomedicalization is particularly problematic for the under-explained and rising epidemic of asthma, as a 'boundary' illness situated at the nexus of biology, environment, and health. A gap remains between public health and medical sociologist's examination of the illness experience of asthma, with little attention to social movement theory, while health movement and environmental justice scholars employ health as a mere variable for mobilization, thus ignoring the complex illness experience and the constraining context of the medical institution.Through the use of participant-observation and intensive interviews at two asthma advocacy organizations, I examine the discursive framing process that occurs within asthma advocacy organizations, and the ways in which their constructions of asthma, and concordant direct action practices, reify or resist the biomedical model. While linking Benford and Snow's (2000) framing theory with Clark et al.'s (2008) conceptualization of biomedicalization, my data suggests that the increasing jurisdiction of the biomedical model significantly influences the framing process of asthma, within three main areas: privatization and individualization of triggers and the illness experience, trust in and privileging of medical authority, and "chosen" sites for resistance and policy reform. In sum, I aim to provide a nuanced explanatory focus to further scholarly attention to the complexities of asthma politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While theoretically important, demedicalization - the processes whereby conditions understood as matters of health/illness come to be redefined in non-medical terms - and remedicalization - the processes whereby those medical meanings are restored - have yet to be adequately specified. This paper undertakes that specification by comparing the histories of routine male circumcision (MC) in the United States and Great Britain. MC became medicalized to a similar extent, through similar processes, in both countries before World War II. However, by the 1960s, routine MC was almost completely demedicalized in Britain and almost universal in the U.S.; it became partially demedicalized after the 1970s. Medical professionals and insurance/healthcare systems drove demedicalization in both countries; in the U.S., grassroots activists also played a critical role, while medical community "holdouts" and parent-consumers resisted demedicalization. Recent developments, including research linking MC to HIV prevention, innovations in infant pain relief, and deaths following religious MC, are differentially likely to produce remedicalization in the two nations, given differences in MC prevalence, HIV epidemiology, insurance/health systems, opportunities for activism, and status of religious groups. Research on (de/re)medicalization should attend more closely to medical "holdouts" from previous eras, prevalence and duration of medicalized practices; and barriers to promoting non-medical interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The story of SIDS is an important chapter in the history of the socio-medical construction of disease categories. It provides another cautionary tale about the dangers of reifying health statistics. In this paper, we answered McKinlay's (1996) call to flex our epidemiological imaginations. We tell the social-structural story behind the rise and fall of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, viewing health statistics with an eye toward the link between "the personal troubles of milieu" and the "public issues of social structure" (Mills 1959: 7). We examine how features of the social structure, including government practices, organizational features of the health system and provider biases gave birth to SIDS and shaped subsequent rates. Our work extends McKinlay's model by recognizing the ideology of science as a major social system influence. Furthermore, we highlight the importance of understanding the corporatized and privatized nature of SIDS academic research and technological innovation. In this case, biomedical reliance on dubious and inaccurate data proved fatal for many infants. Young lives were lost unnecessarily each year because child homicides were categorized as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. The unfortunate climax of our story, however, is how the sociomedical climate of the health care system created a medical market that resulted in the tragic deflection of the Back to Sleep program. In consequence, untold numbers of infants died. Our findings reinforce the importance of a focus on the process of biomedicalization and increasing commodification of research results, including health statistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last few years have seen a rapid growth in sociological research on health movements. This developing field of study brings together insights from medical sociology, sociology of science, and social movements to understand the social processes of contestation over health and illness concerns. While providing insights related to authority and expertise, health movements research tends to focus on national organizations, and has yet to consider how issues become organized at an international or global level. In this conference paper, I seek to advance health movements research through the case of international patient safety advocacy conducted by the World Health Organization's World Alliance for Patient Safety. With the goal of promoting patient safety globally, the Alliance has set forth a variety of campaigns that ultimately seek international safety standardization in healthcare, while at the same time attempting to include the patient perspective in the development of standards. It is through this dual process of international standardization and patient inclusion that the World Alliance makes patient safety global, and can thus be an example of a global health movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely acknowledged that healthcare in the United States is in crisis. Yet surprisingly little is known about what factors facilitate and constrain compassionate patient care in hospitals. While studies in gender and care work have not analyzed patient care in hospitals neither has medical sociology theorized care as a unit of analysis in medical contexts. I put these two fields in dialogue with each other and utilize concepts from the sociology of culture and labor. The articulation of these literatures provides a framework for my analysis of patient care within the hospital context. My ethnography of interactions that take place in similar types of medical units in two different types of hospitals provides detailed analysis of cultures of care in these contexts. I also discuss the factors, which include organizational policies, patient demographics, meaning-making processes, and group-level interactions, that facilitate, constrain and give meaning to patient care among nurses, doctors, patients, administrators and others. Also, interviews with participants from other hospitals provide a degree of breadth to harmonize with my observational data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we review existing research that tackles the nexus of aging, science, and technology, and highlight a research agenda for future investigations. Drawing on theoretical and empirical insights from gerontology, science and technology studies, medical sociology, and medical anthropology, we call for scholars to make science and technology more central to their analysis of aging by studying both the positive and negative relations between aging, science, and technology. That is, scholars should study how technological objects and scientific knowledge enable aging people to participate more fully in civic and political life as well as how they reproduce ageist practices and biases. Specific cases to be discussed include: medical diagnostic categories, clinical treatment protocols, the distribution of health care procedures, and technological design and use. Relations between aging, technology, and science will continue to intensify in the upcoming years and require sustained critical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I address the need for a more comprehensive understanding of the effects of demedicalization by studying debates over "Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood" (GIDC), a controversial psychiatric diagnosis given to gender variant children and linked to homosexuality. Drawing on published research and clinical literatures, archival data, interviews with GIDC researcher-clinicians and their critics, and fieldwork at professional and advocacy meetings, I analyze debates over the legitimacy of the diagnosis in order to understand the relationship between the demedicalization of homosexuality and subsequent medicalization processes. GIDC debates frequently center on the question of the diagnosis's relationship to homosexuality, with some scholars suggesting that GIDC may be an example of the remedicalization of homosexuality. Instead, I argue that as a demedicalized category (and specifically because it has been demedicalized), homosexuality has been a powerful force in shaping debates over GIDC's legitimacy. In the case of homosexuality and GIDC, there continues to be a highly interactional and interconnected relationship between demedicalization and medicalization processes. I thus conclude that even demedicalized categories, such as homosexuality, can continue to exert a great deal of influence in medicalization processes. While demedicalization and medicalization have often been understood as bi-directional processes, I argue that they are linked in an interactive relationship, and that demedicalization should not simply be thought of as the "end" of medicalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High rates of adolescent obesity have become a national public health concern and are an important research topic in medical sociology and epidemiology. Adolescent obesity is an important health concern because of the long-term consequences of adolescent obesity which is a strong predictor of adult obesity and its resultant higher rates of coronary hearth disease, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and mortality. We used data from the 2003 National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) which was a multistage cluster design sample of children less than 18 years of age selected from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The NSCH was conducted from January 2003 to July 2004. We look at two categories of being at risk of overweight and overweight. We run separate logistic analyses by gender in which we first enter demographics of race/ethnicity and age, then family background characteristics, then residence, then family socialization such as mother's exercise, health, and smoking in the family and then behavior of the adolescent such as computer hours, TV hours, reading and participation in exercise and sports teams. African American youth have higher rates of both categories in almost all models and youth from better educated families also have lower rates in almost all models. Patterns vary for boys and girls and for at risk of overweight versus overweight. Boys' weight status is more strongly linked to family structure and socialization than girl's and family structure and mother's exercise have opposite effects on boys than girls. Adolescent activities also have different influences on boys and girls overweight status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the 1998 ASA meeting in San Francisco, I presented a paper identifying the experience of the intensive care unit (ICU) patient as a "missing voice" in medical sociology's research on the illness experience. In that paper, and in the resulting 2000 publication ("The Missing Voice of the Critically Ill: A Medical Sociologist's First-Person Account"; Sociology of Health and Illness 22:68-93), I presented "inadvertent ethnography"—in which intubated respirator patients write to communicate with staff and visitors, and then, post-discharge, could use this written text as a memory aid to recapture memories normally lost to ICU survivors (and to those studying them). I suggested this tool as a means of building a new sociology of the ICU patient experience. The present paper assesses progress in this field ten years since that ASA paper. Essentially, there has been no progress, in sociology. Yet nursing and critical care medicine have published numerous studies on the ICU patient experience. However, these are often based on small samples, and rarely engage with the sociological literature. Much work remains for sociologists, who can use a version of inadvertent ethnography to examine questions such as: what do ICU survivors, looking back, say about information disclosure and empowerment; gender; the effects of open vs. closed (private room) ICU design; and experiences over the full illness trajectory, such as "re-entry", "biographical re-construction", and closure. The paper outlines the author's planned empirical study of such issues, and invites other sociologists to enter the field, themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of lay people's views of complementary and alternative therapies (CAM) have tended to focus on how people's perceptions and evaluations are related to orthodox medicine and its practitioners. In this paper attention is given to how people evaluate a range of CAM therapies for one form of chronic illness which has proved to be particularly resistant to orthodox medical treatment, namely chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). It also considers the extent to which users can be seen as active or passive consumers of these therapies. Drawing on interview data with 41 CFS sufferers from the south east of England, it reports that these respondents have frequently used CAM and that they evaluate these therapies in terms of their percieved potential, the information they have about them, their experience of clinical care and its cost. Respondents' expectations were generally low and they were sceptical that CAM could offer a cure for CFS. There was also evidence of them being both active and passive consumers of health care, on the one hand appearing to be critical and discriminating about CAM and on the other trusting in experts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical sociology and social epidemiology have a long history as intellectual neighbors, with the character of that relationship taking different forms over time, across researchers, and among topics. We call attention to the importance of medical sociologists for analyzing the epistemology of epidemiology, or the social construction of epidemiological rates. Much of health-related research uses such rates as a foundation for research and funding agendas, yet sociological attention to the ways those rates are produced has waned in recent decades. Using data from the recently completed Boston Area Community Health (BACH) Survey, a NIDDK-funded study of urologic conditions in a racially diverse sample of 5,506 men and women aged 30-79, we identify overlapping symptom clusters that correlate with multiple urologic conditions, such that a person with the same symptoms could be reasonably diagnosed with multiple conditions. Among clinicians, debates about definitions or conditions and their prevalence rates flourish, often without sociological input that would shed light on how patient "cases" become part of aggregate epidemiologic "rates." We propose theoretical models for how to conceptualize these issues, as well as research agendas for exploring these issues. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On college campuses across the nation, a new form of drug use is taking place- the non-medical use of psychostimulants, sometimes referred to as the "casual misuse" of prescription drugs, or "pharming." This paper takes an in-depth look at how biomedicine is approached as a tool for performance enhancement in the lives of contemporary college students. At the core of this issue is the question: How is the "student body" transforming to keep up with the pressures of college life? Drawing on survey and interview data, this paper reveals how some students manage the various pressures of college by literally constructing medically-disciplined bodies with the help of psychostimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall. Such students may believe they are literally embodying performance ideals in the college classroom and the social scene, enhancing focus, self-control, and managing time. On the other hand, students may also see psychostimulants as representative of potentially problematic medicalized worlds. These students value the "natural" body, and express concern about a "diagnosis culture" in which prescription drugs are easy to find, side-effects are real, and medical enhancement creates heightened social and academic expectations for everyone. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How have scientific and medical claims been used to reify the sexual binary? And how have gender ideologies been used to garner prestige for science and medicine? This paper uses the case of intersexuality to discuss how gender norms and science co-construct one another. Only a few known conditions that may produce sexually-anomalous genitalia pose a health threat to individuals, yet since the nineteenth century, intersexuality has been medicalized as a condition requiring diagnosis and treatment. This medicalization and pathologization intersects with the growth in prestige and authority that Western culture has granted to science and medicine. Because the medicalization of sexually-anomalous bodies is largely a social construction and political designation, the claims-making and boundary maintenance that go into its medicalization has been subject to realignments in the face of competing claims and shifting ideologies and political terrains. Just as medical authority seized control over the management of intersexuality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the moral authority of intersexed individuals themselves threatens to unseat the claims of science and medicine in the twenty-first century and opens up room for the possibility of demedicalization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers 30 Finnish women's written story and present one case study about consumer-demands to have back pain medicalized. The previous understanding of medicalization as a physician-centered process has altered toward that of a consumer-driven process. One central feature of consumers' claims for the medicalization of back pain is definitional. To what extent does an individual narrative reflect recent trends in consumer-driven demands for the medicalization of back pain? The route to a proper diagnosis and treatment was difficult, and the protagonist points out how the core problem became a definitional issue: whether her back pain was a medical or a moral problem. During the 12 year long process she could not imagine any help beyond the medical system. The protagonist's belief in a medical solution, and her knowledge claim of the bodily origin of her pain sustained her. In this sense her worldview was truly medicalized. The turning point in her story did occur unexpectedly; nvertheless it confirmed her knowledge claim and justified her consumer demand for medical treatment. The suggested thesis of a new turn in medicalization does not come easy for back pain sufferers, however, growing consumer demands for medical solutions is supported by this written narrative. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on the medicalization and de-medicalization of abortion in the United States and Great Britain in the last 140 years. It also discusses criminalization of abortion in both countries in the late 19th and early 20th century as well as the establishment of a therapeutic exception to the criminalization of abortion. The authors conducting this study believe that the concept of medicalization has a long history in the sociology of health and illness. A section of researchers suggest that medicalization may also have benefits such as the legitimation of claims to illness and the reduction of stigma for conditions and practices that were once considered crimes or sins.

The article presents information on the medicalization of memory loss and how individuals are diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Medical sociology has a history of inspecting the impact and socially constructed nature of various medical conditions, technologies and science more broadly. The development and enhancement of diagnostic tools is one of the primary topics of interest in AD-research. The research has concentrated on developing dependable techniques to recognize pathological precursors of AD.

Much research in the medical sociology and aging areas over the past decade has focused on well-being outcomes, with a majority of studies focusing on psychological distress, depression, and quality of life outcomes. Few researchers, however, have studied suffering as a construct in and of itself. This study examines how suffering is defined and how suffering is related to physical aspects of the body or other aspects of older women's lives. For example, do older women perceive physical ailments as causing suffering or is suffering related to other aspects of their lives, such as a lack of control over their lives? Using semi-structured interview data from a sample of 25 women aged 80 and older, we find that although suffering is often talked about in terms of physical aspects of the body, that suffering relates much more than just to the body. It often relates to issues of roles, identities, loss, and control. These results suggest the experience of suffering is multifaceted, hard for individuals to define, and influenced by personal and communal history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women have been traditionally not taken seriously by the modern medical profession. When one couples this with a chronic condition that does not fit well with the biomedical model, the ill person oftentimes seeks alternatives for relief when the traditional medical model fails. This paper explores women with allergies desire for alternatives and the complexities associated with this desire and subsequent search that are linked to social factors beyond the lack of cure or ?getting better. In general, these women do seek help. This process is a complex and complicated one, with multiple dead ends and unclear paths to a successful remedy. What is clear is these women?s search is one which ultimately leads them to a treatment plan that works for them. Treatment takes on a pro-active involvement of care and remedy. It is up to them to find relief. It is up to them to feel better. It is also up to them to make changes in care when deemed necessary. Alternative medicine seems to provide a solution to this quest for relief for some. However, it is not a choice or option for everyone. Not only is it costly, often not covered by health insurance policies and difficult at times to access, it is not always effective enough to be ?worth it.? For those few privileged women, especially those who believe in alternative therapies in general and those who need a reason and remedy that fits with their understandings of their illness, alternative medicine becomes a means for relief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical sociologists have long studied the sociological importance of critical junctures in people?s lives, specifically with respect to the onset and diagnosis of chronic illness. The work of Mike Bury (1982: 1991) and others on ?biographical disruption? can be extended to explore the personal and phenomenological turbulence recounted by local, anti-toxics activists. Biographical disruption suggests that certain events have the potential to unseat taken-for-granted assumptions, breach explanatory mechanisms used to understand the world, and finally demand new routines as a result of changed resources and physical circumstances. By drawing from this rich literature and applying it to retrospective interview data of local anti-toxics activism, this project looks at the complex effects on self, family and community that activism and social organization in response to toxics can have. This paper contributes to the growing body of work on the subjective experience of collective action especially around toxics, as well as emerging work on the role of emotions and narrative in social movement scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pescosolido and Kronenfeld (1995) warned against the growing divide between medical sociology and general sociology, as well as the increasing number of researchers who self-identify or are trained as health services researchers rather than sociologists. The racial disparity in medical treatment should serve as a call to sociologists who seek to reverse the divide between sociology and healthcare problems. Yet, despite sociology having the potential to offer groundbreaking theoretical understanding of racial and ethnic differences in medical treatment, sociological analysis has infrequently been employed to this end. In this paper, I offer suggestions about how medical sociologists might bring sociology to the study of racial disparities in medical treatment. I begin by reviewing the existing approaches to understanding the racial disparity in medical treatment. After considering the extant research, I describe some ways that sociology?s theoretical and methodological tools can advance studies of the racial gap in medical treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gender-related social changes taking place in western society call for a new theoretical narrative of the relationship between gender and health. As both ?biological sex? and ?social gender? become less fixed and more fluid, the traditional distinctions between male and female experience are breaking down and being reconfigured in new and more complex ways. This has significant but as yet generally unexplored implications for health. Since health is fundamental to explaining life chances, its neglect impoverishes feminist sociologists? ability to understand the social changes that are affecting women?s lives. Feminist theory and medical sociology have parted company in recent years. In this paper I argue that bringing them together is essential for an adequate understanding of both gender inequalities in health and women?s experience in contemporary society. I explore ways in which this may be achieved in a critical analysis of ?second? and ?third? wave feminist conceptualisations of the relationship between sex/gender that has been central not only to understanding the social patterning of men?s and women?s health, but also their wider social experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of ?careers? is defined as the movement of individuals through a series of statuses where they enact roles associated with those positions. From occupations to crime, sociologists have embraced this organizing concept to understand the dynamic pathways of individuals? lives. In this paper we argue that the dual-sided nature of the career can also provide medical sociologists with a powerful concept for understanding the intersection of individuals and treatment systems. Using data from a long-term study of persons treated in Vermont State Hospital in the 1950s, we illustrate how the illness career ? defined in this instance as the pace of movement in and out of the hospital ? is shaped by both institutional and individual characteristics and how the career is cumulative, with earlier career events shaping later outcomes. However, major institutional reform, implemented in this case by the adoption of a model rehabilitation program alters these influences and levels the influence of the prior illness career. Our findings illustrate the utility of the career concept for understanding the multi-level, dynamic nature of social processes and suggest that the broader context of the career can be valuable for making sense of complex, oftentimes contradictory influences on a given outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narrative analysis in medical sociology focusses on individuals’ experiences of ill-health as expressed in the stories they tell or the accounts they give. Whether self-authored or co-authored, narratives are seemingly authentic representations of the ontology of experience. In other words, if life is lived as a narrative then the representation of that life in narrative terms will contain sharp truths about personal and social life. In this paper I discuss the theoretical arguments pointing to the need for narrative approaches as a way of developing fuller understanding of health inequalities. I then go on to use a narrative approach to qualitative data about how people make sense of the social forces shaping their experience of ill-health and health inequalities. I argue that this approach complements epidemiological research on health inequalities by illuminating the ‘hidden injuries of class’ rooted in economic and social conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bioethical principles and policy that govern most medical research are based on a biomedical model of illness that does not account for structured inequalities in health. Such inequalities are especially evident within poor countries and, we argue, make current bioethical standards for medical research in poor countries inadequate. Attempts to develop a more appropriate set of bioethical guidelines have retained the assumptions of the biomedical model without recognizing this limitation. The sociological explanation for illness as an outcome of structured inequalities seems more appropriate and leads to some novel suggestions for the development of bioethical policy guidelines. The proposals could apply within developed societies with notable health inequalities, as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of women's experiences of living with and surviving HIV/AIDS. We argue that strong conceptualization of this experience will lead to more efficient health care delivery for this growing population. Our analytical strategy is to integrate the nursing concept of inner strength with ideas from the sociological concept of the existential self. There are numerous definitions of the increasingly popular concept of inner strength in the health care literature, largely developed through the experiences of women living with breast cancer. In general, this concept is useful because it focuses research attention on patients' experiences and perceptions of illness. Nevertheless, current definitions can be critiqued for their tendency to: (1) view inner strength as a thing-like phenomenon, as if it were like a disease, to be measured, treated and supplemented; (2) to describe inner strength in overly metaphoric and romanticized terms that do not reflect the everyday life of living with a serious illness; and (3) assume that inner strength is equivalent to doing well. We argue that this concept can be of greater scholarly and clinical use if it is defined as follows: Inner strength refers to the different ways women with serious illnesses experience and, subsequently, talk about the deepest, existential resources available to and used by them to manage severe threats to body and self. We developed this concept through a series of 19 biographical and conversational interviews with women living with HIV/AIDS. Our interviews found that these women describe their experiences in terms of three types of narratives or stories. Faith stories recount the ways reliance upon a higher power (spiritual or religious) provides a sense of inner strength. Character stories recount the ways women experience inner strength as a resource available to them before as well as during their illness. Uncertainty stories recount the ways... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our premise is that trends in medicine and the social sciences converge and point toward a growing collaboration between the perspectives. As this collaboration continues to be pursued and nourished, a fundamental re-evaluation of the axioms of medicine and the epistemology of the social sciences needs to occur. We are interested in seeing if our main medical sociology journal exposes us to material that generates social evidence for both research and teaching initiatives in medical practice. This type of sociomedical work can potentially impact the way research questions are framed, therefore proving fruitful for building bridges between clinicians, researchers and educators. This can be done while maximizing the applicability of social scientific evidence to patient care and health care policy. For our analysis, a content analysis was performed on the JHSB, with the 1995 special issue acting as a focal point. We divided the years into two groups, before and after the special issue. The before group included 1993 to 1997, sans the special issue. 1997 was chosen on the estimation that it would take at least two years to see any change in direction of the journal itself, due to backlog and the review process. The after group included years 1998 through 2002 issue 2, which was the current available issue when the analysis began. For sociology to be a science practiced "with" other sciences and, thus, effectively working toward greater interdisciplinary progress, we feel policy implications are necessary, and policy recommendations ideally would be explicitly stated. We examined articles for interdisciplinary approaches or focus, which would indicate a commitment toward the proliferation of sociology "with" medicine. The data support our early impressions of JHSB as a primarily quantitative journal dealing largely with mental health issues and whose works are predominantly focused back at the discipline of sociology, to the near exclusion of interacting in actual... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates the effect of marriage on the utilization of preventive health services, in this case flu shots. Improving outreach and otherwise increasing the use of preventive health behaviors is key in an era of skyrocketing health care costs. Theory suggests that married men will be more likely to obtain flu shots due to the social integration provided by marriage, while married women will be more likely to receive shots because of the economic benefits of marriage. This would suggest that the effect of marriage would disappear for women once controlling for economic variables. Using data from the Health and Retirement Survey, I employ logistic regression analysis and report odds ratios. I find no effect of marriage for men and a very limited effect of marriage for women. Possible reasons for this are discussed, and it is concluded that marriage might still have an indirect effect on flu shots as well as a direct effect on health behaviors other than flu shots. Blacks and the uninsured were least likely to receive flu shots. These populations could be the focus of outreach for organizations that administer flu shots, especially if the number of uninsured in the United States remains high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts with a contentious claim, namely, that an adequate sociology of the body must not simply engage with but fully incorporate the biological into its theorizing in a non-reductionist, non-determinist fashion. Questions as to why and how we should do so, and where we might look for profitable leads and exemplars are then addressed in the main part of the paper, with particular reference to medical sociology. The paper concludes with a recapitulation of these arguments and the (future) agendas they raise, in medical sociology and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeology is a historical examination of medical or social scientific disciplines such as medicine itself, psychiatry, and psychology. In this paper, I suggest that medical sociologists interested in the relationship between the human sciences (such as medicine and psychiatry) and human beings should consider using the archaeological method as first laid out by Foucault. For Foucault, this relationship is one of discourse. It is the discourse primarily of medicine and psychiatry that shape humans. The archaeological method can not only reveal this discourse in certain historical eras, but it can show where the ruptures in discourse take place. Therefore, an understanding of particular discourses could benefit sociologists of medicine in their investigations of the processes of medicalization and social control, as well as how medicine and psychiatry construct illness and disorders. But in this paper, I also explain some of the limitations of the archaeological method. I suggest that used alone, this method is only a historical look at discourse. In other words, researchers would not be able to understand how and why certain discourses emerged while some were dismissed by only using archaeology. Other methods, such as Foucault's genealogy, would reveal the force relations that allow certain discourses to be privileged over others. Nevertheless, by utilizing archaeology, medical sociologists can unearth discourses about what is considered inside and outside of the norm as determined by medicine and psychiatry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there has been much research in the medical sociology literature conducted on the doctor-patient relationship, there has been much less research in which the sociologist embodies not only the role of the researcher, but also the role of the patient. Using autoethnography and content analysis, this paper explores the doctor-patient relationship from the point of view of a sociologist who also happens to be a patient, who is dealing with chronic health issues. This paper hopes to shed new light on a topic that has been widely researched, using novel ways of analyzing the doctor-patient relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]