Search

This introduction to a special section brings together three papers first presented at a panel, 'Medical Professions in South Asia: Historical and Contemporary Analyses', at the 26th European Conference on South Asian Studies, held in Vienna, Austria and online, in July 2021. All three papers deal with aspects of the professionalisation of biomedical doctors in India since its independence in 1947. The authors bring together historical and sociological approaches to illuminate the growth of specialisms, patterns of practitioner-patient interactions and efforts to maintain occupational closure and maintain status in the face of growing challenges. The introduction concludes with a discussion of the relevance of these papers for the sociology of health and illness in India and beyond., (© 2023 The Author. Journal compilation © 2023 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)

The article presents a partial historiographical review of the history of women, science, and medicine, a prolific, heterogeneous field of studies that intersects politically with feminism and has been written mostly by women. This survey presents the main streams of thought in the field, which established itself in the second half of the twentieth century. It also describes the historical context in which this scholarship was produced, the topics that were defined, and the field's theoretical references, sources, and research problems. Given the vastness of this scholarship, the article focuses on writings in the English language, particularly the most expressive approaches and theoretical and methodological contributions.

This study analyzes the education and professional career of Jack Elinson (1917-2017), pioneer in the field of sociomedical sciences in introducing its teaching and research in a school of public health at Columbia University, where he worked for thirty years (1956-1986). Elinson is acknowledged for his contributions to social psychology, statistics and medical sociology, especially on health care indicators and their relationship with quality of life. In 1985 he received the Leo G. Reeder Award from the American Sociological Association for his studies in the field of medical sociology. Jack Elinson, Renée Fox, Robert Straus, Eliot Freidson and many others were part of the group of the second generation of social scientists in the process of institutionalization of medical sociology/health care.

A review of the published literature on the origin of medical sociology and its field of action was made. For this, several publications were analyzed and the most relevant aspects were summarized. Although the concept of disease has always been linked to sociocultural aspects, only until the mid-twentieth century, Medicine recognized the importance of sociology to explain health-related issues, especially the social determinants of health. Currently, sociologists work in a multidisciplinary way with doctors to investigate and analyze issues concerning the health of people, to improve the welfare and quality of life of the population. In this sense, the contribution of Sociology has not only enriched the understanding of some diseases, but also different aspects of the work of Medicine.

Background: Contemporary medicine has expressed concern about lay incursions into the diagnostic process buttressed by commonly available medical information on line. Even while the world wide web is a new structure, there is a long historical precedent for this concern. With the emergence of scientific medicine in the late 19th century came a strong belief in the role of diagnosis, not only to explain disease symptoms but also to differentiate the physician from a range of other unreliable practitioners. Along with this focus on diagnosis came also a concern expressed by doctors about patients' inclination to self-diagnose, or to propose candidate diagnoses for the problems that ailed them., Methods: This paper uses Zerubavel's social patterning method. Using material written by doctors from the late 19th until the mid-20th century, I explore comments about, and attitudes towards, self-diagnosis., Results: Three areas of concern about self-diagnosis are expressed by doctors. First, self-diagnosis produces anxiety in the patient. Second, it interferes with doctor-patient relationship. Finally self-diagnosis is commonly linked to commercial interests., Conclusions: Contemporary concerns about self-diagnosis are part of an ongoing social pattern, which simultaneously promotes diagnosis as means for explaining disease but also protests when the diagnostic explanations originate with the patient.

In the years following World War II, and increasingly during the 1960s and 1970s, professional scientific societies developed internal sub-committees to address the social implications of their scientific expertise (Moore, Disrupting Science: Social Movements, American Scientists, and the Politics of the Military, 1945-1975. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). This article explores the early years of one such committee, the American Society of Human Genetics' "Social Issues Committee," founded in 1967. Although the committee's name might suggest it was founded to increase the ASHG's public and policy engagement, exploration of the committee's early years reveals a more complicated reality. Affronted by legislators' recent unwillingness to seek the expert advice of human geneticists before adopting widespread neonatal screening programs for phenylketonuria (PKU), and feeling pressed to establish their relevance in an increasingly resource-scarce funding environment, committee members sought to increase the discipline's expert authority. Painfully aware of controversy over abortion rights and haunted by the taint of the discipline's eugenic past, however, the committee proceeded with great caution. Seeking to harness interest in and assert professional control over emerging techniques of genetic diagnosis, the committee strove to protect the society's image by relegating ethical and policy questions about their use to the individual consciences of member scientists. It was not until 1973, after the committee's modest success in organizing support for a retrospective public health study of PKU screening and following the legalization of abortion on demand, that the committee decided to take a more publicly engaged stance.

In recent decades, an ever-increasing cluster of phenomena has attracted the attention of social scientists and historians of medicine: processes of medicalization. As in other regions, Latin America has been affected by these phenomena. This article surveys recent literature involving sociological studies of these processes in the region, in order to provide an overview of the issue. It explores the theoretical transformations linked to the concept of medicalization in the contexts where they originated. It then analyzes the ways in which the concept has been appropriated by the social sciences in Latin America in order to describe the various phenomena associated with medicalization in the subcontinent.

This article has as its starting point two central ideas: textbooks as a means of production and dissemination of knowledge and narrative as an approach. After a brief review of studies on health/medical sociology textbooks, I analyze a few of these textbooks from the 1900-2012 period, produced in the United States and England. I have selected eleven textbooks which I thought were representative. In addition to a content analysis, the textbooks are located within the process of constitution of the health/medical sociology with brief references to the biographies of the authors. The textbooks analyzed were classified according to the main narrative features: doctor-centered; interdisciplinary; pedagogical; analytical; almost autobiographical; critical; and synthetic-reflective. In the final remarks, some points about the textbooks, limits and possibilities are presented.

The article reviews the impact of post-structuralism and postmodern social theory upon health sociology during the past 20 years. It then addresses the emergence of new materialist perspectives, which to an extent build upon insights of post-structuralist concerning power, but mark a turn away from a textual or linguistic focus to address the range of materialities that affect health, illness and health care. I conclude by assessing the impact of these movements for health sociology., (© The Author(s) 2015.)

Context: By understanding its history, the medical education community gains insight into why it thinks and acts as it does. This piece provides a Foucauldian archaeological critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the journal Medical Education on the publication of its 50th Volume. This analysis draws upon critical social science perspectives to allow the examination of unstated assumptions that underpin and shape educational tools and practices., Methods: A Foucauldian form of CDA was utilised to examine the journal over its first half-century. This approach emphasises the importance of language, and the ways in which words used affect and are affected by educational practices and priorities. An iterative methodology was used to organise the very large dataset (12,000 articles). A distilled dataset, within which particular focus was placed on the editorial pieces in the journal, was analysed., Results: A major finding was the diversity of the journal as a site that has permitted multiple - and sometimes contradictory - discursive trends to emerge. One particularly dominant discursive tension across the time span of the journal is that between a persistent drive for standardisation and a continued questioning of the desirability of standardisation. This tension was traced across three prominent areas of focus in the journal: objectivity and the nature of medical education knowledge; universality and local contexts, and the place of medical education between academia and the community., Conclusions: The journal has provided the medical education community with a place in which to both discuss practical pedagogical concerns and ponder conceptual and social issues affecting the medical education community. This dual nature of the journal brings together educators and researchers; it also gives particular focus to a major and rarely cited tension in medical education between the quest for objective standards and the limitations of standard measures., (© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Since the emergence of type 2 diabetes as a public health threat around the middle of the 20(th) century, accounts of disease causation have focused predominately on lifestyle or genetics, or both, while the role of broader structural issues such as psychosocial distress has been downplayed. Yet in the years prior to this emergence, when diabetes remained the preserve of the upper classes, medical experts drew upon multiple narratives when considering the condition, the most popular of which being the role of social organisation and the interplay between mind, body and environment. This article is based on a discourse analysis of the writings of the most prominent diabetes experts between 1800 and 1950 about both the causes and management of the illness. It highlights how, although the connection between lifestyle and diabetes was well established among physicians, individual-level explanations only fully supplanted the emphasis on social organisation as diabetes began to make the transition from being a disease of the rich to one of the poor. It argues that this discursive shift was shaped by the dynamics of class relations rather than any new forms of scientific evidence developed at the time., (© 2015 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.)

The paper explores the contributions of Roger Bastide (1898-1974) to the field of insanity and mental illness, revisiting his work in social psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychology and, sociology of mental disorder. It highlights the interdisciplinary nature that marks Bastide's works, that also include religion, art, literature. The paper presents biographical data and highlights the importance of Bastide to the field of sociology of health/illness. The analysis situates Bastide's work at the time of its development, comparing it with the development of the sociology of mental illness today.The paper explores the contributions of Roger Bastide (1898-1974) to the field of insanity and mental illness, revisiting his work in social psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychology and, sociology of mental disorder. It highlights the interdisciplinary nature that marks Bastide's works, that also include religion, art, literature. The paper presents biographical data and highlights the importance of Bastide to the field of sociology of health/illness. The analysis situates Bastide's work at the time of its development, comparing it with the development of the sociology of mental illness today.

The aim of this study was to show the evolution of the paradigm of disability associated with the scientific discourse, but also social and cultural changes. The problem of people with dis abilities has existed since the beginnings of civilization, and with its development the concept of disability has also evolved. The individual problems of a patient have, over time, been treated as a medical problem associated with the disease, including its effects on physical and mental health. After World War II there were significant changes in the perception of disability and disabled people, which was associated with the rise of medical sociology and the emergence of new descriptions of diseases. New discourse on people with disabilities meant that they began to participate more frequently in public debate. This, in turn, had an impact on the attitudes of society and social policy towards people with disabilities. The model of disability evolved, and disability was finally treated as a social problem with an impact on the functioning of the whole society.

Aaron Antonovsky wrote extensively, although disjointedly, about the roles of culture in salutogenesis. This paper provides a synopsis of his work in this arena. A literature review identified those of his English language writings in which culture was a subject, and relevant text segments were analysed using an inductive followed by a deductive method. Using thematic network analysis, text segments were sorted inductively by open coding and then analysed. This was followed by deductive text segment coding guided by the constructs of the salutogenic model of health. The analysis revealed that Antonovsky had an expansive interest in the roles of culture in salutogenesis. His writings included attention to the role of culture in: (a) shaping life situations; (b) giving rise to stressors and resources; (c) contributing to life experiences of predictability, load balance and meaningful roles; (d) facilitating the development of the sense of coherence and (e) shaping perceptions of health and well-being. Antonovsky's writings about culture were sometimes conjectural, as well as being obviously influenced by his life experience in the USA and then in Israel, and by the spirit of the times in which he lived. However, he also drew extensively on his own and others' empiricism, leading him to view culture as an integral aspect of the salutogenic model of health. The present analysis provides salutogenesis scholars with a roadmap of Antonovsky's reflections, ponderings and conclusions about culture in the context of salutogenesis. It provides assistance in the form of an overview of Antonovsky's treatment of culture in the context of salutogenesis., (© The Author(s) 2014.)

This article analyzes Boys in white: student culture in medical schoolby Howard S. Becker, Blanche Geer, Everett C. Hughes and Anselm Strauss, considered a model of qualitative research in sociology. The analysis investigates the trajectories of the authors, the book, qualitative analysis, and the medical students, emphasizing their importance in the origins of medical sociology and the sociology of medical education. In the trajectory of the authors, bibliographical information is given. The trajectory of qualitative research focuses on how this methodology influences the construction of the field. The investigation of the students' trajectory shows how they progress through their first years at medical school to build their own student culture.

This article analyzes the historical, social and cognitive dimensions of the sociology of medicine in the construction of its identity, from Wolf Lepenies' perspective. It is understood that the construction of an identity does not end with the first historical manifestations, but is consolidated when it is institutionalized and structured as a field of knowledge by creating its own forms of cognitive expression. The text is divided into three parts: in the first the precursors are presented, highlighting the role played by some travelers, naturalists and folklore scholars, followed by "social physicians-scientists" and the first social scientists (1940-1969). In the second part, aspects of the consolidation of the social sciences in health are presented at two significant moments, namely the 1970s and 1980s. In the third part, the issues raised by the field are addressed in general terms. It is considered that once the main structural stages are in place there is still a need for the formation of new generations of social scientists in health. It is also essential to disseminate scientific production and to ensure that the relations are studied in depth and institutionalized with the sociological matrices on the one hand and with the field of health on the other.

Introduction and Objective: The cognitive identity of medical sociology has developed in a historical perspective in the context of a specific double frame of reference comprising medicine and general sociology. The purpose of this study is to reconstruct the process of the development of the subdiscipline's research specificity in Poland, drawing attention to the general-sociological context of the conceptualization of basic interpretive and analytical sociomedical categories. In this aspect, the presented study is based on the analysis of Polish sociomedical and general-sociological research published from the early 1960s until 1989. The purpose of the study is also to describe in this perspective the structure of the research field of contemporary Western medical sociology, which was a major point of reference in this process., Abbreviated Description of the State of Knowledge: A look at the chronology of how the scientific identity of medical sociology developed in Poland from a historical perspective shows the gradual balancing-out of the subdiscipline's medical references, typical of the early stage of its development, and manifested in the implementation of research projects for the requirements of doctors, through consistently developed and cultivated connections with general sociology manifested in complementing the knowledge of society with aspects related to health and illness. A sine qua non condition for undertaking this scope of research was to work out strictly sociological formulations of these concepts, which was accomplished as a result of the successful reception of general sociology by the subdiscipline in question., Summary: The contemporary understanding of the research field of Polish medical sociology defined by Magdalena Sokołowska and developed as part of the 'school of medical sociology', which she initiated, is characterized by the maintenance of close relations with general sociology (affiliations of sociomedical departments in academic sociological institutions, etc.), and at the same time, by partnership cooperation with medicine (teaching in medical universities, application studies, etc.).

Health promotion practice requires partnerships with different sectors of society and at all levels of government to achieve health equity as the prerequisites for health include domains that exist outside of the health sphere. Therefore existing partnerships for health need to be strengthened and the potential for new partnerships must be considered in order to address health holistically. The literature base exploring the church as a partner and setting for health promotion is predominantly from the US and therefore there is a need for research exploring the opportunities and challenges of partnering with churches in the Australian context. This paper presents an historical overview of the involvement of churches and church affiliated organisations in health and welfare in Australia recognising that while some of the values, practices and beliefs of churches may have considerable synergies with health promotion, others may be sources of contention or difference.

Margot Jefferys (1916-1999) was not only the person who introduced medical sociology into Great Britain, but also the researcher and professor who, during thirty years, exerted the most deep influence on the teaching of health social sciences either in undergraduate or especially graduate studies, since the beginning of her career, in 1953, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In addition to create a global panorama concerning the Jefferys' works, this study highlights two texts, which are situated into the field we are researching: the history of health sociology. The first one, published in 1991, discusses the relationships between epidemiology and sociology; and the second, published in 1996, discusses the field of medical sociology. Both texts are a series of considerations regarding the Jefferys' thought and the more recent questions of the field in Great Britain.

Classification shapes medicine and guides its practice. Understanding classification must be part of the quest to better understand the social context and implications of diagnosis. Classifications are part of the human work that provides a foundation for the recognition and study of illness: deciding how the vast expanse of nature can be partitioned into meaningful chunks, stabilizing and structuring what is otherwise disordered. This article explores the aims of classification, their embodiment in medical diagnosis, and the historical traditions of medical classification. It provides a brief overview of the aims and principles of classification and their relevance to contemporary medicine. It also demonstrates how classifications operate as social framing devices that enable and disable communication, assert and refute authority, and are important items for sociological study.

Previous research has demonstrated that people who report same-sex experience tend to have poorer mental health than heterosexual people in adolescence and adulthood. Yet, little is known about how same-sex experience is associated with changes in mental health between the two life stages. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 12,056), this study assesses patterns of same-sex experience between adolescence and young adulthood and their consequences for changes in depressive symptoms, binge drinking, and drug use. Compared to people with no same-sex experience, those who report such experience only in adolescence show greater levels of mental health problems in adolescence, but they do not show any worse mental health changes during the transition into young adulthood. People who develop their first same-sex experience in young adulthood, however, tend to show worse changes, consistent with the argument that entry into a stigmatized role is psychologically harmful. Among females, those who report same-sex experience in both life stages also show worse mental health changes, indicating that the continuity in minority status contributes to their cumulative disadvantage. However, these differences are modest, and substantial amounts of variations in mental health changes are observed within each group. Findings are used to address the dynamic aspect of mental health disparity linked to sexuality.

Differing accounts are conventionally given of the origins of medical sociology and its parent discipline sociology. These distinct "histories" are justified on the basis that the sociological founders were uninterested in medicine, mortality and disease. This article challenges these "constructions" of the past, proposing the theorization of health not as a "late development of sociology" but an integral part of its formation. Drawing on a selection of key sociological texts, it is argued that evidence of the founders' sustained interest in the infirmities of the individual, of mortality, and in medicine, have been expunged from the historical record through processes of "canonization" and "medicalization."

Throughout their history, symbolic interactionism and critical perspective have been viewed as divergent theoretical perspectives with different philosophical underpinnings. A review of their historical and philosophical origins reveals both points of divergence and areas of convergence. Their underlying philosophies of science and views of human freedom are different as is their level of focus with symbolic interactionism having a micro perspective and critical perspective using a macro perspective. This micro/macro difference is reflected in the divergence of their major concepts, goals and basic tenets. While their underlying philosophies are different, however, they are not necessarily contradictory and areas of convergence may include the concepts of reference groups and looking glass self within symbolic interactionism and ideological hegemony within critical perspective. By using a pragmatic approach and combining symbolic interactionism and critical perspectives, both micro and macro levels come into focus and strategies for change across individual and societal levels can be developed and applied. Application of both symbolic interactionism and critical perspective to nursing research and scholarship offers exciting new opportunities for theory development and research methodologies. In nursing education, these two perspectives can give students added insight into patients' and families' problems at the micro level while, at the same time, giving them a lens to see and tools to apply to problems at the macro level in health care. In nursing practice, a combined symbolic interactionism/critical perspective approach assists nurses to give high-quality care at the individual level while also working at the macro level to address the manufacturers of illness. New research questions emerge from this combination of perspectives with new possibilities for theory development, a transformation in nursing education, and the potential for new practice strategies that can address individual client and larger system problems through empowerment of clients and nurses.

Sociological research emphasizes that personal networks offer social resources in times of need and that this capacity varies by the social position of those involved. Yet rarely are sociologists able to make direct comparisons of such inequalities. This study overcomes this methodological challenge by examining network activation among residents of two unequal neighborhoods severely devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Results indicate that local network capacities of Lower Ninth Ward residents relative to those of the more affluent Lakeview neighborhood dissipated before, during, and after the disaster to erode the life chances of individual residents and the neighborhood they once constituted.

The chapter starts from the Renaissance (although the origins of Italian neurology can be traced back to the Middle Ages), when treatises of nervous system physiopathology still followed Hippocratic and Galenic "humoral" theories. In Italy, as elsewhere in Europe, the concepts of humoral pathology were abandoned in the 18th century, when neurology was influenced by novel trends. Neurology acquired the status of clinical discipline (as "clinic of mental diseases") after national reunification (declared in 1861 but completed much later). At the end of the 19th and first decades of the 20th century, eminent Italian "neuropsychiatrists" (including, among many others, Ugo Cerletti, who introduced electroconvulsive shock therapy in 1938) stimulated novel knowledge and approaches, "centers of excellence" flourished, and "Neurological Institutes" were founded. In the first half of the 20th century, the history of Italian neurology was dominated by World Wars I and II (which stimulated studies on the wounded) and the fascist regime in-between the Wars (when the flow of information was instead very limited). Italy became a republic in 1946, and modern neurology and its distinction from psychiatry were finally promoted. The chapter also provides detailed accounts of scientific societies and journals dedicated to the neurological sciences in Italy.

This article provides an historical review of international research related to sociology and oral health and healthcare. I begin by considering the relevance of the mouth and oral health to social interactions and physical health, and outline existing inequalities in oral health and healthcare experiences. The paper examines critically some of the existing published research in the field - considering both what might be described as sociology of oral health and healthcare and sociology in oral healthcare - and demonstrates the dearth of sociological research related to this subject compared to other areas of interest within the field of sociology of health and illness. I conclude by suggesting some ways in which this area could be expanded and developed further. I suggest that sociological analyses of how individuals experience, understand and manage their mouth and oral health, can add to and enhance the broader field of the sociology of health and illness. Further, examining experiences and provision of oral healthcare may provide sociology with a new opportunity to explore the neglected field of private healthcare, but also to engage with health policy makers who seek to address oral healthcare needs.

Eliot Freidson (1923-2005) is considered one of the founders of the sociology of medicine. Both his critics and admirers in the sociological and medical fields recognize his work as an international benchmark. This paper analyzes Freidson's intellectual biography without concentrating on his ideas or their transformation over the course of time. The emphasis is on the personal constraints that marked his intellectual career within a broader context, with the many different opportunities and choices. It establishes the intersection between the singular trajectory of an intellectual, and the structures, processes and events in which he was immersed and which he changed by his actions.

Aim: to investigate how and why Chinese midwife numbers are dwindling, and to help understand the role of midwives in society in general., Method: to critically examine Chinese midwifery in three stages: (1) historical literature overview; (2) identification and reinterpretation of Chinese midwifery and its development; (3) placing issues that have arisen within a sociological context (i.e. the modernisation of obstetric technologies and the meaning of modernity)., Findings: no books on the history of Chinese midwifery were found. History was classified into three stages: (1) before 1929, a period of an indigenous model; (2) 1929-1996, the highs and lows of the bio-medical model; (3) after 1996, the demise of Chinese midwives. The issues identified were the legitimacy and professionalisation of Chinese midwives, the meaning of modernity and the reasons for the decline of Chinese midwifery., Conclusion: no sufficient evidence-based research was conducted to support the recent changes made to Chinese midwifery. The modernisation of maternity care in China took place amid dramatic social and cultural changes within society. As a consequence, midwifery as a profession in China has been marginalised. The modernisation of maternity care has failed to deliver on personal choice, quality of service and professional diversity., Implications for Practice: evidence-based research and the state's responsibility are essential to ensure the quality of maternity care and to protect the interests of women. The state's responsibilities include legislation regarding the role of midwives, code of practice, professional standards, responsibility and accountability in order to make midwifery care a true choice for women.

The sick-man may be said to have disappeared from medical cosmology in two related senses during the period 1770-1870. Firstly, as control over the means of production of medical knowledge shifted away from the sick towards medical investigators the universe of discourse of medical theory changed from that of an integrated conception of the whole person to that of a network of bonds between microscopical particles. Secondly, as control over the occupational group of medical investigators was centralized in the hands of its senior members the plethora of theories and therapies, which had previously afforded the sick-man the opportunity to negotiate his own treatment, were replaced by a monolithic consensus of opinion imposed from within the community of medical investigators.

The SchwartzReport tracks emerging trends that will affect the world, particularly the United States. For EXPLORE, it focuses on matters of health in the broadest sense of that term, including medical issues, changes in the biosphere, technology, and policy considerations, all of which will shape our culture and our lives.

Diagnoses are the classification tools of medicine, and are pivotal in the ways medicine exerts its role in society. Their sociological study is commonly subsumed under the rubrics of medicalisation, history of medicine and theory of disease. Diagnosis is, however, a powerful social tool, with unique features and impacts which deserve their own specific analysis. The process of diagnosis provides the framework within which medicine operates, punctuates the values which medicine espouses, and underlines the authoritative role of both medicine and the doctor. Diagnosis takes place at a salient juncture between illness and disease, patient and doctor, complaint and explanation. Despite calls for its establishment, almost two decades ago (Brown 1990), there is not yet a clear sociology of diagnosis. This paper argues that there should be, and, as a first step, draws together a number of threads of medical sociology that potentially contribute to this proposed sociology of diagnosis, including the place of diagnosis in the institution of medicine, the social framing of disease definitions, the means by which diagnosis confers authority to medicine, and how that authority is challenged. Through this preliminary review, I encourage sociology to consider the specific role of diagnosis in view of establishing a specific sub-disciplinary field.