All the Perspectives about sociology of health & medicine are described here.

1. MEESUM KAZMI
BS SOCIOLOGY
(SUBJECT)
SOCIOLOGY OF HEALTH &
MEDICINE
BZU MULTAN, PAKISTAN

2. Topic
Theoretical Perspectives on
Sociology of Health & Medicine

3. Agenda
◦Medical Sociology
◦Perspectives/Theories
◦Functionalism
◦Conflict
◦Symbolicinteractionism
◦Feminism
◦Post Modernism/Post structuralism
◦Conclusion

4. ◦Sociology is the
systematic study of
human behaviour in
society.
◦Medical sociology is the
systematic study of how
humans manage issues
of health and illness,
disease and disorders,
and health care for both
the sick and the healthy.

5. ◦Medical sociologists study the physical,
mental, and social components of health and
illness.
◦It draws a pluralistic perspective towards
investigation.
◦Medical sociology provides an analytical
framework for understanding the social
contexts of health, illness and health care.

6. Theoretical Perspective
◦While sociologists make no claim to being biological
scientists, they do make the claim that biological knowledge
can be sociologically explained.
◦Sociologists do not accept the medical model of disease and
illness as simply biological events.
◦Sociologist on the basis of empirical research, demonstrate
how the interactions of class, of professional interests, of
power, of gender and of ethnicity enter into the formation of
knowledge about and treatment of a sickness or disease.

7. ◦Sociologists show how diseases could be differently understood,
treated and experienced by demonstrating how disease is produced
out of social organization rather than nature, biology, or individual
lifestyle choices.
◦This is how sociologists according to their model of society show the
relationship of disease with the society.
◦Major Perspectives in this regard are:
1. Functionalism
2. Conflict
3. Symbolic interactionism
4. Feminism
5. Post Modernism/Post structuralism

8. Structural Functionalism
◦The first major theoretical passage through medical
sociology is structural functionalism focuses on Macro
level.
◦According to the functionalist perspective, health is
vital to the stability of the society.
◦Grounded in the work of Talcott Parsons (1951), this
theory focus on the Functional role that social
institutions such as medicine play in maintaining the
wellbeing of society.

9. ◦Sickness represents a form of Social deviance because it
makes individuals unable to fulfil their normal social roles.
◦Sick role: Patterns of expectations that define appropriate
behaviour for the sick and for those who take care of them.
◦The role of doctors is to treat the patients and to legitimize
their withdrawal from social obligations by conferring on
them the “sick role.”
◦Because health is a functional pre-requisite for the social
system, people, when feeling unhealthy, are obliged to
consult a doctor to assume this special role.

10. ◦According to Parsons, the sick person has a specific role with
both rights and responsibilities.
◦The exemption also requires Legitimation by a physician; that
is, a physician must certify that the illness is genuine.
◦Parsons argues that since the sick are unable to fulfil their
normal societal roles, their sickness weakens the society.
◦Therefore, it is sometimes necessary for various forms of
social control to bring the behaviour of a sick person back in
line with normal expectations.
◦In this model of health, doctors serve as gatekeepers, deciding
who is healthy and who is sick a relationship in which the
doctor has all the power.

11. Criticism
◦But is it appropriate to allow doctors so much
power over deciding who is sick?
◦What about people who are sick, but are unwilling
to leave their positions for any number of reasons
,personal/social obligations, financial need, or lack
of insurance, for instance?

12. Conflict Perspective
◦The second major theoretical passage is conflict theory
focuses on Macro level.
◦Building on the work of Karl Marx and Max Weber and
represented by more contemporary conflict theorists
such as Randall Collins.
◦Many issues with the health care system, as with most
other social problems, are rooted in capitalist society.

14. ◦According to critical sociology, capitalism and the
pursuit of profit lead to the Commodification of
health: The changing of something not generally
thought of as a commodity into something that can be
bought and sold in a marketplace.
◦Being shaped by the dominant profit ideology of
capitalism, the medical institution is part of the
commodity production process and of a Commodity
fetishist culture of health care.

15. ◦Corporations, private insurance companies,
pharmaceutical companies and investors have influence
over how the health care system is run and funded,
which type of diseases are researched, whether cheaper
generic versions of patented drugs can be sold, the
nature of the health care delivered, and even how the
physiology of the human body is understood.
◦Focusing on the Political and Class context of health
inequalities by a political economy perspective

16. ◦This approach does not contest the objectivity of the
biomedical paradigm but rather the interests actually
served by the medical institution.
◦Alongside the health disparities created by class
inequalities, there are a number of health disparities
created by racism, sexism, ageism, and heterosexism.
◦When health is a commodity, the poor are more likely
to experience illness caused by poor diet.
◦It examined how the pursuit of profit by the capitalist
system produces disease and health inequalities.

17. Criticism:
If everything in the contemporary society is in
contradiction and conflict then what holds the
society together in the age of individualism,
egotism and self-interest?

18. Symbolic interactionism
◦The third major theoretical passage is symbolic
interactionism, this perspective focuses more on the “Micro
level” social processes.
◦Through the work of Anselm Strauss, Erving Goffman,
Howard Becker, Norman Denzin, and Kathy Charmaz this
perspective has examined important topics
◦How medical schools socialize physicians, patients, how
physicians and nurses use the tools , how patients and their
families manage the emotional labour of “illness,” etc.

19. ◦According to theorists working in this perspective, health and
illness are both socially constructed.
◦Interactionists focus on the specific meanings and causes
people attribute to illness.
◦The term Medicalization of Deviance refers to the process
that changes “bad” behaviour into “sick” behaviour.
◦Medicalization is most often described as “A process by
which nonmedical problems become defined and treated as
medical problems, usually in terms of illness and disorders”.

20. ◦De medicalization is the reverse: “A problem that no longer retains
its medical definition”.
◦For instance, sociologist Erving Goffman (1963) described how
social stigmas hinder individuals from fully integrating into society.
◦Stigmatization means that their identity is spoiled; they are labelled
as different, discriminated against, and sometimes even shunned.
◦The Stigmatization of Illness often has the greatest effect on the
patient and the kind of care he or she receives.
◦The stigma may keep people from seeking help for their illness,
making it worse than it needs to be.

21. Feminism

22. ◦ The fourth major theoretical perspective is feminism. Drawing on a variety of
theories within sociology, including symbolic interaction and conflict theory,
this perspective is concerned with the role that patriarchy, sexism, and gender
play in the health and wellbeing of women.
◦ This perspective has examined important issues such as the medicalization of
the female body, the quality of health care women receives, and the role that
Patriarchy has played in the construction of medical knowledge.
◦ There are more women patients because of their social role, and because of the
medicalization of their life cycle. It is not because they are biologically sicker
than men.
◦ In general, feminist health sociologists argue that medicine and patriarchy
control women by enforcing passivity, dependence and submission as
appropriate feminine traits.

23. ◦“Women get sicker but men die quicker” might be a way of
summing this up.
◦Medicalization refers to the process by which previously
normal aspects of life are redefined as deviant and needing
medical attention to remedy. Historically and
contemporaneously, many aspects of women’s lives have
been medicalized, including menstruation, pre-menstrual
syndrome, pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause. The
medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth has been
particularly contentious in recent decades.

24. Post structuralism / Post Modernism
◦The fifth major theoretical framework is post structuralism.
Based on the work of the French philosopher and historian
Michel Foucault(1926-1984).
◦This perspective examines how people use the discourses of
medicine, psychiatry, and science to care for and control
themselves and others.
◦Foucault argues that there is more to modern societies than
economics. In particular, showing Max Weber, he points to the
development of bureaucratic surveillance of the population as
a dominant feature of society.

25. ◦The development of professional groups whose claim is both to
understand human beings (knowledge and to prescribe to them how
to act (power) is a central part of his analysis of Western societies.
◦Major theoretical passage is postmodernism. Building on the work of
Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Derrida), this perspective makes two
radical assertions. First, it asserts that medicine and biomedical
science are nothing more than discourses; powerful textual strategies
that use a variety of binaries to control such important issue
◦It asserts that the dominating discourses of medicine and biomedical
science need to be deconstructed and re-created to form new ways of
thinking about health and health care, ways that are better able to
address the post-industrial, globally interdependent, culturally
fragmented, and nonlinear world in which we now live.

26. Theory/Perspective Model of society Causes of disease
Role of medical
profession
Conflict
(Marx)
Conflictual & explorative
Putting profit a head of
health
To discipline and control the
working class. Provides the
individualize explanation of
disease.
Structural
Functionalism
(Parsons)
Basically harmonious
and stable set of
interlinked social roles
and structures.
Social strain caused by
meeting the demands of
social role.
Rehabilitate the individual to
carry on the social role.
Postmodernism
(Michael Foucault)
Net of the power
relations with no one
dominant source
administered surveillance
Diseases are labels used to
sort and segregate the
population to make it
easier to control
To enforce compliance with
normal social role and to
ensure that we internalize
these norms
Feminist
Explorative & repressive
of women through
patriarchy
Carrying out the social
roles enforced on women
by patriarchal men. The
medicalization of women
around the reproductive
life cycle
To enforce the conformity
with patriarchal norms of
femininity & motherhood.
Comparison/Conclusion

27. Refrences
1. Medical Sociology (Frederic W. Hafferty & Brian
Castellani) Page No.335-338.
2. Medical Sociology (Guido Giarelli) Page No. 348-352.
3. An introduction to sociology of health and illness (Kevin
White) Chapter 01, Page No. 01-13.

28. Any Questions?
Thank You!