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SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND
STUDYING SOCIOLOGY
Defining Health and Medicine
 WHO’s definition of Health:
 A state of complete physical, mental, and social
well-being and not merely an absence of disease,
or infirmity.
 Medicine: “The Greatest Benefit to Mankind”
 Hippocrates- “The art has three factors, the
disease, the patient, the physician.”
The difference
 Medical Sociology is divided into two
subfields with some differences:
 Sociology of Medicine
 Sociology in Medicine
Differentiation
 Sociology of Medicine
 Sociology in Medicine
 Social Epidemiology
 Sociology of Health and other subsequent
fields
Theoretical Perspectives
 Structural Functionalism, Conflict Theory,
Feminist and Symbolic Interactionism:
 Review of basic premises
 Functionalism: the influence of the rest of
society on individual health patterns and status.
 Durkheim and social processes
 Being constrained by laws and customs of
society.
 Durkheim’s suicide- handout
Durkheim’s suicide
 Egoistic: people are detached from society and
are suddenly on their own, overwhelmed by
stress
 Anomic: people suffer a sudden dislocation of
normative systems where their norms and values
are no longer relevant
 Altruistic: people feel themselves so strongly
integrated into a demanding society that their
only escape seems to be suicide
 Fatalistic: people kills themselves because their
situation is hopeless-not developed by Durkheim
 Examples for each?
Functionalism cont...
 Brenner’s study of heart disease, stoke and
kidney failure
 Thesis: there are few areas of our lives not
intimately affected by the state of economy.
 Heart attacks and recession
 Stress causes exposure to risk factors associated
with these particular health phenomenon.
 Rates of employment and mental hospital
admissions
 The provocation hypothesis and the uncovering
hypothesis as explanations for his findings.
Conflict Theory
 Text: the unequal social arrangements and
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racialization present in our society and
others.
Power differences present in society and the
structures within society.
The main focus is on stratification and power
struggles for those who are considered
“proletariats.”
Access to medical care and medicine
The term medicalization- definition
Medicalization and
Capitalism
 Medicalization: the process that defines a
condition or activity as a disease or an illness;
treatment of the conditions is then considered
the responsibility of the medical professional.
 The notion of social control in Conflict theory and
in the process of medicalization
 Article “Medicalization and Social Control”
 The definition of medicalization- too many
variations and no concrete definition available.
 The social factors responsible for part of the
medicalization process
Factors contributing to
Medicalization
 Secularization
 The Medical Profession
 Social Control Durkheim, Parsons, and other theorists- an issue
of power
Consequences of
Medicalization
 Assumption of medical moral neutrality
 Domination by experts
 Individualization of social problems
 Depoliticization of behaviour
 Dislocation of responsibility
 Using powerful technologies
 The “exclusion of evil.”
Feminist Theories
 The oppression of women in the medical
profession
 The oppression of women as objects of
medical practice
 Midwifery a good example
Symbolic Interactionism
 Cooley, Thomas and Goffman
 Micro level perspective and all focus on
interactions and behaviours of individuals.
 The theory of the looking-glass self
 The basic components of the theory:
 We see ourselves in our imagination as we think we
appear to the other person
 We see in our imagination the other person’s judgment
of our appearance.
 As a result of what we see in our imagination about how
we are viewed by the other person, we experience some
sort of self-feeling, such as pride or humiliation.
SI Theory Cont...
 Thomas and the definition of the situation
 The same crisis will not produce the same
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effect uniformly in all people.
Crises lie in the interaction between a
situation and a person’s capacities to meet it.
Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis- life as a
theatre
We live in worlds of social encounter in which
we act out a line of behaviour- our scripts.
The maintenance of face is a condition of
Critical Race Theories
 The relation to the body being different for those
of different races and ethnicities.
 The role of differentiation and inequality in
medicine for those of different races/ethnicities.
 The article “Describing the White Ethnic Group.”
 Stark differences in life expectancy and
morbidity rates.
 Social group differences in terms of support and
buffering of stress.
Post-Modernist Thinking
 There is no truth to our claims and there is no
way to get to truth
 All arguments are opinion based and follow
rules of discourse to attain truth.
 Discourse of Medical profession and the “The
Birth of the Clinic”
 The Body and medical profession’s labelling
of disease
Methodology in Sociology of
Medicine
 Based on the theoretical orientation
 Functionalists and Conflict theorists can use
either quantitative or qualitative methods.
 Same is said for most theoretical frameworks
 SI and Post Modernists focus on interactions
and use mainly qualitative and content
analyses for their methdologies.
Plan
 Social theory conflict
 Social position
 Types and Modes of Conflict
 Group conflict, conflict of interest, class
conflict
 Social conflict theory is a Marxist-based social theory which argues
that individuals and groups (social classes) within society have
differing amounts of material and non-material resources (the
wealthy vs. the poor) and that the more powerful groups use their
power in order to exploit groups with less power. The two methods
by which this exploitation is done are through brute force and
economics. Earlier social conflict theorists argue that money is the
mechanism which creates social disorder. The theory further states
that society is created from ongoing social conflict between various
groups. There are other theories of deviance, the functionalist
theory, the control theory and the structural strain theory. It also
refers to various types of negative social interaction that may occur
within social relationships.
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Social position means a position of an individual in a given society and culture. A
given position (for example, the occupation of priest) may belong to many individuals.
Social position influences social status. One can have several social positions, but only
one social status.
Social positions an individual may hold fall into the categories of occupation (medical
doctor, academic lecturer), profession (member of associations and organisations),
family (parent, sibling, etc.), hobby (member of various clubs and organisations),
among others. An individual is likely to create a personal hierarchy of such positions,
where one will be a central position while the rest are perhiperal positions.
Social positions are visible if they require an individual to wear a uniform or some
other kind of identifying mark. Often individual clothes or other attributes will
advertise what social position one has at the moment. Non-visible social positions are
called hidden. A position that is deemed the most important to given individual is
called central, others are peripheral. If a sequence of positions is required to obtain a
given position, it can be defined as a career, and change of position in this context is a
promotion or demotion. Some social positions may make it easier for a given person
to obtain others; in other cases, some positions may be restricted based to individuals
meeting specific criteria.
Social position together with social role determines individual's place in the social
environment and social organisation. A group of social positions will create a social
class and a social circle.
A social conflict caused by interference between social positions is called a position
conflict.
Social conflict is a conflict or confrontation of
social powers.
Social conflict is an important aspect of social
power. Sociologists however differ in views
whether social conflict is limited to hostile or
antagonistic opposition and whether it is a clash
of coercive powers or of any opposing social
powers.
Types of social conflict:
position conflict - conflict involving social positions
role conflict - conflict involving social roles
Conflict can exist at a variety of levels of analysis:
 intrapersonal conflict (though this usually just gets delegated out to
psychology)
 interpersonal conflict
 emotional conflict
 group conflict
 organizational conflict
 community conflict
 intra-state conflict (for example: civil wars, election campaigns)
 international conflict
 environmental resources conflict
 intersocietal conflict
 intra-societal conflict
 ideological conflict
 diplomatic conflict
 economic conflict
 military conflict
Group conflict
 Group conflicts, or group intrigues, is a manner in which collective
social behaviour causes groups of individuals to contradict with each
other. This contradiction is often caused by differences in social
norms, values, religion, etc. Authoritative individuals within groups
tries to imply a [casus belli] upon their out view and actions against
contradicting groups for justification. Often demagogically classed
arguments is used, but internal collective pressure of one's group
most times prevent individuals from disagreeing or critizising their
own group.
Class conflict
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Class conflict is both the friction that accompanies social relationships between
members or groups of different social classes and the underlying tensions or
antagonisms which exist in society due to conflicting interests that arise from
different social positions. Class conflict is thought to play a pivotal role in history of
class societies (such as capitalism and feudalism) by Marxists and anarchists who refer
to its overt manifestations as class war, a struggle which today, in their view, is fought
most relentlessly and secretly by the capitalist class.
Class conflict can take many different shapes, for example direct violence such as
wars fought for resources and cheap labor, policemen beating poor blacks or the
workers who try to democratically run their workplaces and economy; indirect
violence such as deaths from poverty, starvation or unsafe working conditions;
coercion, such as the threat of losing a job or pulling a much needed investment, or
ideology, e.g. trying to convince people that the power should be in the hands of the
working class or the capitalist class.
It can be open, as with a business lockout aimed at destroying a labor union, or it can
be hidden, as with an informal slowdown in production that protests low wages or an
excessively fast or dangerous work process.
conflict of interest
 A conflict of interest is a situation in which someone in a position of
trust, such as a lawyer, a politician, executive or director of a
corporation or a medical research scientist or physician, has
competing professional or personal interests. Such competing
interests can make it difficult to fulfill his or her duties impartially.
Even if there is no evidence of improper actions, a conflict of interest
can create an appearance of impropriety that can undermine
confidence in the ability of that person to use his/her position with
proper ethics. A conflict of interest can exist even if no unethical or
improper act results from it. This is seen as a "conflict of roles" where
the interest of ones self differs from that of others. The conflict can
be mitigated by third party verification or third party evaluation
noted below - - but it still exists.