ANSOC 385 - Sociology of Health and Illness

What has been called the epidemiological transition has meant that chronic (versus acute and infectious) conditions are today’s overwhelming health and health care challenge. These chronic conditions are often thought of by medicine as having to do with good or bad lifestyle choices made by individuals (for example, smoking, poor diet or lack of exercise), or a matter of good or bad luck in terms of one’s genes, and consequently a matter to be addressed either by health care services or a change in individual behavior. However, this course will, in part, investigate and examine the relationship between social factors and the production and distribution of health, disease and illness in modern society. In other words, the course will illuminate the social production and distribution of health and illness. That is, similar to Durkheim’s finding that suicide is at once personal and social (internal to the social structure), so too is health, disease and illness.

What is more, the medical focus on disease (the biological) often deflects attention from the illness experience, which is crucial to understanding sick persons’ relationship to health and well-being. In other words, health and illness are meaningfully lived experiences (rather than simply a matter of the presence or absence of disease). Finally, the course will also examine the relationship between medicine and the phenomenon of medicalization.

3 credits
Spring