The Sociology of Health and Illness

by Conrad, Peter

• ISBN13: 9781429205580
• ISBN10: 142920558X
• Edition: 8th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-07-31
• Publisher: Worth Publishers

Summary

First published in 1981, The Sociology of Health and Illness: Critical Perspectives has become an essential resource for anyone interested in health and health care. In this best-selling anthology, Peter Conrad brings together a wide array of critical and sociological perspectives that highlight the integral relationship between health, illness, and society. Fully updated, the eighth edition includes a new section on the uninsured as well as 10 new readings examining topics such as the failures of health care reform, new trends in medicalization, the growing power of the drug industry, and the determinants of media attention to disease. Provocative and wide-ranging, The Sociology of Health and Illness continues to provide students with an integrated analysis of the most important issues regarding health care today. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Peter Conrad is the Harry Coplan Professor of Social Sciences and Chair of the Health:  Science, Society and Policy program at Brandeis University. He earned his doctorate from Boston University. The author of numerous books and journal articles on the sociology of health and illness, Dr. Conrad received the Leo G. Reeder Award from the American Sociological Association in 2004 for his distinguished contributions to medical sociology. His works include the award-winning Deviance and Medicalization (written with J.W. Schneider), the co-edited Handbook of Medical Sociology, Fifth Edition, and his newest book, The Medicalization of Society, published in 2007.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. ix
General Introduction	p. 1
The Social Production of Disease and Illness	p. 5
The Social Nature of Disease	p. 5
Medical Measures and the Decline of Mortality	p. 7
Who Gets Sick? The Unequal Social Distribution of Disease	p. 20
Social Class, Susceptibility, and Sickness	p. 24
Excess Mortality in Harlem	p. 30
Gender Differences in Mortality: Causes and Variation in Different Societies	p. 38
Disease and Disadvantage in the United States and in England	p. 55
Our Sickening Social and Physical Environments	p. 67
Popular Epidemiology: Community Response to Toxic Waste-Induced Disease	p. 70
Social Relationships and Health	p. 78
Dying Alone: The Social Production of Urban Isolation	p. 87
Health Inequalities: Relative or Absolute Material Standards?	p. 102
The Social and Cultural Meanings of Illness	p. 108
Anorexia Nervosa in Context	p. 112
AIDS and Stigma	p. 126
Whose Deaths Matter? Mortality, Advocacy, and Attention to Disease in the Mass Media	p. 134
The Experience of Illness	p. 153
Self-Help Literature and the Making of an Illness Identity: The Case of Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS)	p. 156
The Meaning of Medications: Another Look at Compliance	p. 173
The Remission Society	p. 186
The Social Organization of Medical Care	p. 191
The Rise and Fall of the Dominance of Medicine	p. 191
Professionalization, Monopoly, and the Structure of Medical Practice	p. 194
Notes on the Decline of Midwives and the Rise of Medical Obstetricians	p. 200
The End of the Golden Age of Doctoring	p. 213
Countervailing Power: The Changing Character of the Medical Profession in the United States	p. 239
Other Practitioners In and Out of Medicine	p. 249
A Caring Dilemma: Womanhood and Nursing in Historical Perspective	p. 251
From Quackery to 'Complementary' Medicine: The American Medical Profession Confronts Alternative Therapies	p. 261
Medical Industries	p. 278
The Health Care Industry: Where Is It taking Us?	p. 280
The 'Pinking' of Viagra Culture: Drug Industry Efforts to Create and Repackage Sex Drugs for Women	p. 287
Financing Medical Care	p. 297
Why the United States Has No National Health Insurance: Stakeholder Mobilization Against the Welfare State, 1945-1996	p. 301
Paying for Health Care	p. 321
Doctoring as a Business: Money, Markets, and Managed Care	p. 329
System Failure: The Uninsured	p. 337
Uninsured in America	p. 339
Young, Sick, and Part-Time: The Vulnerability of Youth and the New American Job Market	p. 347
Medicine in Practice	p. 356
The Struggle Between the Voice of Medicine and the Voice of the Lifeworld	p. 358
Social Death as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy	p. 370
The Language of Case Presentation	p. 386
'Choosing Later' about Dialysis Treatment Near the End of Life	p. 405
Dilemmas of Medical Technology	p. 415
The Artificial Heart: How Close Are We and Do We Want to Get There?	p. 418
Issues in the Application of High Cost Medical Technology: The Case of Organ Transplantation	p. 424
A Mirage of Genes	p. 438
Contemporary Critical Debates	p. 449
The Relevance of Risk	p. 449
The Prevalence of Risk Factors Among Women in the United States	p. 451
Risk as a Moral Danger: The Social and Political Functions of Risk Discourse in Public Health	p. 460
The Medicalization of American Society	p. 468
Medicine as an Institution of Social Control	p. 470
The Shifting Engines of Medicalization	p. 480
Rationing Medical Care	p. 493
Rationing Medical Progress: The Way to Affordable Health Care	p. 495
The Trouble with Rationing	p. 499
Toward Alternatives in Health Care	p. 503
Community Initiatives	p. 503
Politicizing Health Care	p. 507
Helping Ourselves: The Limits and Potential of Self-Help	p. 510
Illness and Internet Empowerment: Writing and Reading Breast Cancer in Cyberspace	p. 519
Comparative Health Polices	p. 534
Comparative Models of 'Health Care' Systems	p. 538
Health Care Reform: Lessons from Canada	p. 553
The British National Health Service: Continuity and Change	p. 560
Prevention, Movements, and Social Change	p. 575
A Case of Refocusing Upstream: The Political Economy of Illness	p. 578
Embodied Health Movements: New Approaches to Social Movements in Health	p. 592
Credits	p. 605
Index	p. 608
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