Download Book Reviews 593 against its opposite `prog sociology`, a sociology

593
Book Reviews
against its opposite ‘prog sociology’, a sociology that seeks to self-consciously demonstrate its own cleverness. Beer’s vision for punk sociology is ‘raw, stripped, back and
fearless’. Doing punk sociology involves risk. It might mean sharing an unpolished
piece of work with colleagues, it might mean experimenting with different forms of
communication in order to engage with a wider audience. This introduces a discussion
about what kinds of writing might be used by punk sociologists. What would our Sniffin
Glue look like? Beer advocates moving beyond our comfortable modes of communication, particularly foregrounding the potential of social media and digital sociology, or
using traditional formats such as the book and journal article but in subversive ways.
Punk sociology also challenges existing forms of organization and assembly. In a time
when academic labour is often precarious or badly paid, there is growing discontent
with expensive major conferences. What might a punk sociology conference or event
look like?
Beer’s vision is at once exhilarating and exhausting: ‘One day the punk sociologist
is writing a blog post, the next they are working on an audio podcast, the next they are
creating posters, the next they are making short films’ (p. 50). How to fit in the postermaking, alongside the teaching, the admin and being ready for the next REF, you may
ask? But perhaps it is easier to be facetious about this challenge than to properly
re-examine what we do as sociologists and why we are doing it. One of the book’s boldest
sections deals with the comfort of pigeonholes: ‘We are trained to make sociological
wallpaper. We are trained to find ways to blend ourselves into existing established
debates . . . We are trained to find a pigeonhole . . . for our work and stick with it’ (p. 54).
The responsive and mobile sociology that Beer calls for involves taking risks and the
possibility of falling on one’s face, but surely better to do that than become irrelevant in
a comfy pigeonhole.
From the introduction it is evident this is not going to be a snarling, spitting Sex
Pistols of a book but more of a gentle wake up call, or poke in the ribs, for Sociology.
This welcome intervention is too cautious and open ended to be called a manifesto – at
times the book seems to argue with its own mild-manneredness, ‘Punk often looked to
actively undermine hierarchies, challenge complacency, and upset received wisdom.
This might be a bit extreme for sociology, hopefully not, but perhaps at least a gentle and
knowing iconoclasm might still be of value’ (p. 42) – but the book is all the better for it.
After all, this is a call for an eclectic sociology; a call for conversation and participation,
rather than an overly didactic frontman of a book.
Courtney Davis and John Abraham
Unhealthy Pharmaceutical Regulation: Innovation, Politics and Promissory Science
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, £65 hbk (ISBN: 9780230008663), 336 pp.
Reviewed by: Rachel Hendrick, University of Edinburgh, UK
Unhealthy Pharmaceutical Regulation: Innovation, Politics and Promissory Science
explores the changes in the regulation of innovative pharmaceuticals in the neoliberal
period since 1980, covering the two regions that comprise the world’s largest medicines
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on September 17, 2016
594
Sociology 49(3)
markets: the USA and the EU. This era witnessed the reduction in state intervention on
business activity and the liberalisation of markets. In medicine, where evidence-based
research is critical, empirical realists Davis and Abraham produce convincing evidence
that the deregulatory changes were made in the commercial interests of the pharmaceutical
industry, rather than public health. Eight years of research into the regulation of the
pharmaceutical industry is brought together here in a single comprehensive resource. The
authors successfully develop key theories with their empirical research, drawing widely
upon interviews, and documentary and archival analysis.
Pharmaceutical studies as an emerging field within the social sciences is marked by
the 1995 publication of Abraham’s book Science, Politics and the Pharmaceutical
Industry. This work applied theories from political sociology and political science to
research in the pharmaceutical industry. In Unhealthy Pharmaceutical Regulation, Davis
and Abraham build on this work, exploring five theories key to understanding pharmaceutical regulation during the neoliberal period: Neoliberal Theory; Capture Theory;
Corporate Bias Theory; Disease-Politics Theory; and Expectations/Marketing Theory.
These are then brought to bear on case studies in later chapters.
Davis and Abraham present a longitudinal macro- and meso-level analysis in the
form of a political economy of the regulation of ‘innovative’ drugs during the neoliberal
period, which offers the reader the context through which to later explore the case studies.
This discussion is perhaps the book at its most dense, and these sections may have
benefitted from some more illustrative examples. However, this level of detail is crucial
in showing organisationally and ideologically how pharmaceutical regulation has
evolved under the period surveyed here.
The case studies provide readers with a more micro-level perspective on a number of
innovative pharmaceuticals in the context of key neoliberal deregulatory reforms, and
within the framework of the theoretical perspectives referred to above. These allow the
reader to explore to what extent those theories stack up against the evidence. The drugs
and illnesses examined in these case studies cover a number of therapeutic areas, from
discussion of medicines developed to treat serious and life-threatening illnesses such
as cancer, to others aimed at caring for non-life-threatening conditions, for example
irritable bowel syndrome. Ultimately, all of these case studies demonstrate how the
neoliberal corporate bias, which underpinned the deregulatory reforms, impacted upon
the micro-social level of the decision making and regulatory outcomes of specific
drugs, with detrimental effects on public health.
This latest work from Davis and Abraham offers an extremely comprehensive
discussion of the changes in drug regulation in Europe and the USA under neoliberalism.
Through drawing on extensive fieldwork, they demonstrate how, in both these regions,
the interests of the regulators and industry have become intertwined, with the former
seeing the latter as partners or clients. Therefore alterations in pharmaceutical regulation
have been made in the commercial interests of companies, rather than those of patients
and public health, with the result being that pharmaceutical innovations have not necessarily led to therapeutic advances. Davis and Abraham argue that when the interests of
patients and the pharmaceutical industry do not coincide, it is the responsibility of regulatory agencies to ensure that they put patients first: ‘the lesson from the neo-liberal era
is that regulatory standards need to be raised and extended in the interests of public
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on September 17, 2016
595
Book Reviews
health, rather than lowered and loosened’ (p. 275). However, for this to happen, greater
independence of the regulators from commercial influence is needed. Although perhaps
not a surprising conclusion, it is one reached through a comprehensive examination of
the evidence presented in the book.
Davis and Abraham end with practical suggestions of how this can be achieved.
Most importantly, they argue, the industry and regulatory bodies need to be completely
separated. This could be achieved, for example, through appointing agency heads that
have a record of independence. Importantly, funding of the agencies should not come
directly from the industry, but rather via the taxpayer, with governments recouping the
costs from the industry. Finally, they propose that scientists employed by the regulatory
agencies, rather than the drug manufacturer, should conduct pre-market testing of innovative pharmaceuticals. Although these suggestions may sound on the surface as being
self-evident – the problems of corporate bias arising from too close a relationship
between regulators and industry are much discussed – it is this book that clearly sets out
the evidence making this the case.
In sum, Unhealthy Pharmaceutical Regulation is essential reading for all those
interested in the field of pharmaceutical regulation, and it will be of great benefit to
policy-makers, regulators, scholars and students alike.
Reference
Abraham J (1995) Science, Politics and the Pharmaceutical Industry: Controversy and Bias in
Drug Regulation. London: UCL Press.
Peter Murphy
The Collective Imagination: The Creative Spirit of Free Societies
Farnham: Ashgate, 2012, £68 hbk (ISBN: 9781409421351), 258 pp.
Reviewed by: Mujadad Zaman, University of Cambridge, UK
Fortis imaginato temperat camus, or ‘the strength of the imagination creates the event’,
Erasmus reminds us. Debates on how ‘mind’ affects ‘world’ have historically been the
preserve of philosophers, yet thinking of society as a place of imagination, the imaginarium, continues to draw interest from within the sociological community. Peter Murphy’s
latest work, The Collective Imagination: The Creative Spirit of Free Societies is a propitious offering to this literature at a time when political and academic discussions on the
importance of creativity in the ‘Knowledge Society’ become evermore ubiquitous.
‘Imaginative thinking is appositional’ argues Murphy and as such lays the tenor of
his work. Having the ability of uniting ‘opposing qualities into distinctive, sociallypowerful and coherent patterns, shapes and forms’ is the hallmark of any creative society
(pp. 1–2). This simple idea is explicated throughout the book in a series of perceptive
arguments, demarcating the book between ‘The Media of Creation’ which offers
descriptions and features of imagination whilst the second part on ‘Collective Creation’
suggests how imagination is expressed in society.
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on September 17, 2016