This lecture introduces key concepts and perspectives in the sociology of health and illness. It discusses the problems with defining terms like health, illness, and disease, as definitions vary between disciplines, cultures, and over time. Both social constructionist and biological perspectives are examined. Social constructionism views these states as socially produced, while biological views emphasize innate factors. An interdisciplinary approach is needed, as each perspective provides insights. Definitions are contested and contextual, with implications for policy. Health, illness, and disease are complex topics with both subjective and objective aspects.

1. Sociology of Health and
Illness
Week 1. Conceptualising and
Defining Health and Illness.

2. Overview of Lecture.
 conceptual foundations of course.
 problems associated with conceptualising and
defining health and illness;
 medical, sociological, bio-social, psychosocial and
cross-cultural perspectives.
 Are illness and health social constructions or a
biological categories?
 The experience of 'being sick’.
 Parson’s model of the 'sick role'
 Sickness as a form of deviance.

3. Problems of definition
 Defining terms always problematic for social scientists
 a number of definitions of healthy and unhealthy or ‘normal’
and ‘pathological’ states,
 definitions vary between academic, professional and
popular or ‘lay’ accounts
 also vary widely within and between disciplines.
 biological explanations differ from social constructionist
accounts
 little agreement on the root causes and material conditions
of illness.
 best way to approach questions on health and illness is to
use a multi perspectival approach.

4. Time, space, place and context
 AlI concepts professional, academic and lay
concepts are also culturally and historically
specific.
 They vary from culture to culture and across
time.
 Western Culture and obesity - a sign of ill-
health thus socially undesirable
 In non-Western cultures -a sign of affluence
thus socially desirable

5. Time, space, place and context 2
 Epilepsy in the Middle Ages viewed as a violent
possession by malevolent or even divine forces.
 Empedocles (ancient Greece) a blocking of veins
in the head due to an excess of Phlegm.
 Early part of the 20th century epilepsy linked with
insanity.
 Today we ‘know’ that epilepsy caused by abnormal
neurological activity that occurs as a result of
damage or injury to the brain
 However what we ‘know’ is subject to
reinterpretation.

6. Time, space, place and context 3
 at any time new technological advances,
new medical discoveries, new ways of
looking at the structure and functioning of
the body or brain could replace the current
orthodoxy and epilepsy could come to be
seen in a completely different light.

7. Social constructionism
 emphasizes the ways in which social institutions and social
norms, attitudes, values, behaviour and beleifs- socially
produced rather than naturally given or determined
 Strong social constructionist approaches question the
natural or biological basis for almost all social phenomena.
 Sexuality and gender differences, illness, health and
physical strength are all social states/ behaviours/ mores/
codes etc are products of culture not biology.
 We are socialised into certain patterns of behaviour

8. Social constructionism 2
 social processes create systems of ideas and
practices about x, y or z that vary across time and
space.
 social constructionist perspectives particularly
problematic when we begin to discuss sexuality,
consciousness, the body, disease and human
emotions or when issues of Ontology are raised.
 Social reality often appears to be determined by
bodies, disease or the natural world (all
biological/material things)

9. Disease as a social response
 Mc Laughlin disease a mode of social
response rather than an organic disruption.
 no ‘illness’ or ‘sickness’ ‘out there’ that is an
objective social reality
 only subjective ‘experiences’ of illness,
 subjective experiences determined by the
social, cultural, historical and geographical
contexts which we inhabit..

10. Biological Perspectives
 Social constructionism often contrasted with Biological
reductionism.
 nature nurture debate.
 Biologism, Biological determinism and biological
reductionism- attempts to explain social phenomena in
terms of the material structure/ functioning of the human
body.
 Eg Social behaviour is the result of hereditary or innate
influences (Nature) and not learning or environment
(Nurture).
 Biologism widely discredited in sociology.
 Political reasons for this. Seen as conservative.

11. An interdisciplinary turn?
 Many disciplines converge in the field of
health illness and medicine.
 Many perspectives also.
 Each discipline/ perspective has something
to offer.

12. Recap.
 Social constructionists -illness, health, disease are all relative
concepts
 not universal but particular,
 Social concepts - learned and shared.
 Concepts often tell us more about the societies out of which
they came than about the thing they are actually describing.
 Social constructionists largely concerned with explaining and
describing the differing experiences of illness by reference to
culture.
 Biological perspectives often emphasise the natural state, the
biological certainty, the innateness and the inevitability of
things.
 explain illness by reference to biology.

13. Problems
 Secular/Scientific concepts often at odds
with local religious or ethical systems
 Example HIV awareness programmes in
Texas
 In some African states condoms seen as
undermining masculinity, anal sex in many
places a way of avoiding pregnancy or
cleansing oneself of AIDS virus.

14. Important definitions for
sociology of Health and Illness
 Morbidity- amounts of certain types of illness,
heart disease, cancer etc -Subjective?
 Mortality – death. Relative health of social groups
assessed by comparing infant mortality rates-
Objective?
 Disease- can be used in two main 1). any
pathological (unhealthy) condition, bodily or
mental whether caused through accident or injury
2). it can be used to refer to a specific medically
diagnosed condition with distinctive, recognised
symptoms.- Subjective or objective?

15. Definitions 2
 Illnesss or feeling ill is arguably the subjective
experience of disease or ill health.
 Sickness- Is a social state or a social role.
 Health- Bentham: ‘a state of being which is free
from discomfort or, more positively, produces
comfort’
 World Health Organisation: ‘Health a state of
complete physical, mental, and social well-being,
and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’

16. Health as a particularistic
concept.
 Baxters study revealed a ‘negative’ concept
of health, as ‘not ill’
 To this can be added a concept of health
despite disease
 Health as a reserve as in someone is
healthy because ‘when he is ill he recovers
very quickly’

17. Baxter (1995) -2
 Health as ‘virtuous behaviour’
 Health as physical fitness
 Health as energy, vitality.
 Health as a Social Relationship.
 Health as Function.
 Health as psycho-social wellbeing
 Concepts of health differ over the life course
and between sexes.

18. Conclusion.
 All definitions contested.
 Different views depending on discipline and
perspective.
 Variability has important implications for social
policy.
 Health, illness and disease not as unproblematic
categories as one might think.
 Need to think about subjective and objective
aspects of definitions.
 Time, space, place, context produce different
definitions.