The Sociology of Health and Illness
Critical Perspectives

Tenth Edition

Edited by:

Peter Conrad - Brandeis University, USA
Valerie Leiter - Simmons College, USA

Other Titles in:
Sociology of Health and Illness

August 2018 | 800 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc

Now with SAGE Publishing!

The Tenth Edition of The Sociology of Health and Illness: Critical Perspectives addresses the crucial issues in this field with over 45 readings (1/3 of which are new to this edition) from the scholarly literature on health and medicine, thus providing students with the most balanced and comprehensive analysis of health care today. This best-selling anthology includes both micro-level and structural perspectives, frameworks for understanding these critical issues, and a breadth of material that allows instructors to mix and match materials to meet their course needs.

New to this Edition

17 readings are new to this edition.
All introductions by the editors have been updated to reflect new readings and the latest data.
The sections on Financing Medical Care and Health Care Reform have been merged to reflect the current debate about health policy taking place largely within the context of financing.
The section previously called Comparative Health Policies is now called Global Issues, with an expanded scope that includes health inequalities between countries, the globalization of ADHD, and the international migration of health care workers.
New material on the dilemmas of medical technology provides both a conceptual framework for understanding the key issues as well as a case study about genetic counseling to help students apply those concepts directly.
New readings on illness, medicine, and the internet offer increasingly relevant information on how individuals address health and illness in their increasingly technology-dominated lives.
A new section on globalization helps students understand the impact of factors such as the international pharmaceutical industry, international migration, and the role of the internet.

PART I. THE SOCIAL PRODUCTION OF DISEASE AND THE MEANINGS OF ILLNESS

Chapter 1. The Social Nature of Disease

Reading 1. Medical Measures and the Decline of Mortality

John B. McKinlay and Sonja M. McKinlay

Reading 2. Social Conditions as Fundamental Causes of Health Inequalities

Jo C. Phelan, Bruce G. Link and Parisa Tehranifar

Chapter 2. Who Gets Sick? The Unequal Social Distribution of Disease

Reading 3. Social Class, Susceptibility, and Sickness

S. Leonard Syme and Lisa F. Berkman

Reading 4. Racism and Health: Pathways and Scientific Evidence

David R. Williams and Selina A. Mohammed

Reading 5. Sex, Gender, and Vulnerability

Rachel C. Snow

Reading 6. Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine

Paul E. Farmer et al.

Reading 7. A Case of Refocusing Upstream: The Political Economy of Illness

John B. McKnight

Chapter 3. Our Sickening Social and Physical Environments

Reading 8. Social Relationships and Health

James S. House, Karl R. Landis and Debra Umberson

Reading 9. The Health Politics of Asthma

Phil Brown et al.

Reading 10. Dying Alone: The Social Production of Urban Isolation

Eric Klinenberg

Chapter 4. The Social and Cultural Meanings of Illness

Reading 11. Morality and Health: News Media Constructions of Overweight and Eating Disorders

Abigail C. Saguy and Kjerstin Gruys

Reading 12. Illness Meaning of AIDS Among Women with HIV: Merging Immunology and Life Experience

Alison Scott

Reading 13. Whose Deaths Matter?: Mortality, Advocacy, and Attention to Disease in the Mass Media

Elizabeth M. Armstrong, Dan Carpenter and Marie E. Hojnacki

Chapter 5. The Experience of Illness

Reading 14. Electronic Support Groups, Patient-Consumers, and Medicalization: The Case of Contested Illness

Kristin K. Barker

Reading 15. The Meaning of Medications: Another Look at Compliance

Peter Conrad

Reading 16. Being-in-Dialysis: The Experience of the Machine-Body for Home Dialysis Users

Rhonda Shaw

PART II. THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF MEDICAL CARE

Chapter 6. The Rise and Fall of the Dominance of Medicine

Reading 17. Professionalization, Monopoly, and the Structure of Medical Practice

Peter Conrad and Joseph W. Schneider

Reading 18. Notes on the Decline of Midwives and the Rise of Medical Obstetricians

Richard W. Wertz and Dorothy C. Wertz

Reading 19. The End of the Golden Age of Doctoring

John B. McKinlay and Lisa D. Marceau

Reading 20. Countervailing Power: The Changing Character of the Medical Profession in the United States

Donald W. Light

Chapter 7. Other Providers In and Out of Medicine

Reading 21. A Caring Dilemma: Womanhood and Nursing in Historical Perspective

Susan Reverby

Reading 22. From Quackery to “Complementary” Medicine: The American Medical Profession Confronts Alternative Therapies

Terri A. Winnick

Chapter 8. Pharmaceuticalization

Reading 23. From Lydia Pinkham to Queen Levitra: Direct-to-Consumer Advertising and Medicalization

Peter Conrad and Valerie Leiter

24. Prescriptions and Proscriptions: Moralizing Sleep Medications

Jonathan Gabe, Catherine M. Coveney and Simon J. Williams

Chapter 9. Financing Medical Care

Reading 25. Paying for Health Care

Thomas Bodenheimer and Kevin Grumbach

Reading 26. The Origins of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Jill Quadagno

Reading 27. The Debate Over Health Care Rationing: Déjà Vu All Over Again

Alan B. Cohen

Chapter 10. Medicine in Practice

Reading 28. The Struggle Between the Voice of Medicine and the Voice of the Lifeworld

Elliot G. Mishler

Reading 29. Cultural Brokerage: Creating Linkages Between Voices of Lifeworld and Medicine in Cross-Cultural Clinical Settings

Ming-Cheng Miriam Lo

Reading 30. Social Death as Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Stefan Timmermans

Reading 31. "I want you to save my kid!": Illness management strategies, access, and inequality at an elite university research hospital

Amanda M. Gengler

Chapter 11. Dilemmas of Medical Technology

Reading 32. Medical Sociology and Technology: Critical Engagements

Monica J. Casper and Daniel R. Morrison

Reading 33. “It just becomes much more complicated”: Genetic Counselors’ Views on Genetics and Prenatal Testing

Susan Markens

PART III. CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL DEBATES

Chapter 12. The Relevance of Risk

Reading 34. Risk as Moral Danger: The Social and Political Functions of Risk

Deborah Lupton

Reading 35. The Pursuit of Preventive Care for Chronic Illness: Turning Healthy People into Chronic Patients

Meta J. Kreiner and Linda M. Hunt

Chapter 13. The Medicalization of American Society

Reading 36. Medicine as an Institution of Social Control

Irving Kenneth Zola

Reading 37. The Shifting Engines of Medicalization

Peter Conrad

Reading 38. The Best Laid Plans? Women’s Choices, Expectations and Experiences in Childbirth

Claudia Malacrida and Tiffany Boulton

Reading 39. C-Section Epidemic

Theresa Morris

PART IV: EXPANDING HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE

Chapter 14. Illness, Medicine, and the Internet

Reading 40. Illness and the Internet: From Private to Public Experience

Peter Conrad, Julia Bandini and Alexandria Vasquez

Reading 41. It’s Like Having a Physician in Your Pocket! A Critical Analysis of Self-Diagnosis Smartphone Apps

Deborah Lupton and Annemarie Jutel

Chapter 15. Prevention, Movements, and Social Change

Reading 42. Politicizing Health Care

John McKnight

Reading 43. Embodied Health Movements: Uncharted Territory in Social Movement Research

Phil Brown et al.

Chapter 16. Global Issues

Reading 44. Health Inequalities in Global Context

Jason Beckfield, Sigrun Olafsdottir and Elyas Bakhtiari

Reading 45. The Impending Globalization of ADHD: Notes on the Expansion and Growth of a Medicalized Disorder

Peter Conrad and Meredith R. Bergey

Reading 46. International Medical Migration: The Global Movements of Doctors and Nurses

Hannah Bradby

Comprehensive and adaptable to a number of pedagogical approaches.

Dr Bradly Nabors

Sociology Dept, Drexel University

August 14, 2021

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Sample Materials & Chapters

Reading 25. Paying for Health Care

Reading 40. Illness and the Internet: From Private to Public Experience

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Critical Perspectives

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