SOCI 3645 Lecture Notes - Allopathic Medicine, Sick Role, Social Fact
1 Dec 2013
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Document Summary
A sociological approach to health, illness and medicine. Illness happens, is experienced, and is addressed in a social context: some people and groups are more likely than others to develop illness regardless of their individual genetic makeup. The sociology of health and illness studies the social causes and consequences of illness, disease, disability, and death and describes the ways in which illness affects/is affected by patterns of social interaction among people, groups and institutions. The sociology of medicine studies the ways in which the medical system constructs what is considered an illness out of a variety of symptoms and the organized ways in which this system responds to illness. Sociological approaches/theories to studying health and illness that shape the topics of discussion: structural functionalism, conflict theory/feminist theory, symbolic interactionism. Sociology is supposed to study health and illness as systemic things, attributes of society as a system.
