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Sociology
of Health and Medicine - Syllabus
Syllabus - Rogers State University
Syllabus - University of California, San Diego -
SOCIOLOGY G/290 - “Sociology of Health, Illness, and Biomedicine”
Professor Steven Epstein, Department of Sociology.
sepstein@ucsd.edu - weber.ucsd.edu/~sepstein
weber.ucsd.edu/~sepstein/Web_syllabus_Soc290_2000_Spring.htm
This course is intended to provide an introduction to central topics in the sociology of
medicine, health, and illness. At the same time, an important goal is to suggest how that
field is being redefined and reinvigorated by social and cultural studies of science and
technology. Although many of the themes we will address have a long history, the emphasis
will be on recent scholarship—most of it sociological, but some of it drawn from
anthropology, history, and cultural studies. The course focuses more-or-less exclusively
on the United States in the 20th and 21st centuries.
We will seek to understand biomedicine by exploring multiple domains: the market relations
that commodify health care; the work sites in which medical practice is articulated; the
research arenas that transform medical knowledge, practice, and technologies; the systems
of cultural meaning within which ideas of health and disease circulate; the social
inequalities that structure the experience of illness and access to care; the social
movements that challenge biomedical authority and expertise; and the bodies and selves
that experience and are remade by illness.
Health Disparities and the Embodiment of Inequalities
Bruce J. Link and Jo Phelan, “Social Conditions as Fundamental Causes of
Disease,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 1995 (extra issue): 80-94.
Richard G. Wilkinson, “National Mortality Rates: The Impact of Inequality?” in
Perspectives in Medical Sociology, 2nd ed., ed. Phil Brown (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland
1996), 76-82.
Chloe E. Bird and Patricia P. Rieker, “Gender Matters: An Integrated Model for
Understanding Men’s and Women’s Health,” Social Science & Medicine 48
(1999): 745-755.
Will H. Courtenay, “Constructions of Masculinity and their Influence on Men’s
Well-Being: A Theory of Gender and Health,” Social Science & Medicine 50 (2000):
1385-1401.
David R. Williams, “Race and Health: Basic Questions, Emerging Directions,”
Annals of Epidemiology 7, no. 5 (July 1997): 322-333.
Nancy Krieger, “Embodying Inequality: A Review of Concepts, Measures, and Methods for
Studying Health Consequences of Discrimination,” International Journal of Health
Services 29, no. 2 (1999): 295-352.
Jennifer Terry, “Agendas for Lesbian Health: Countering the Ills of Homophobia,”
in Revisioning Women, Health, and Healing: Feminist, Cultural, and Technoscience
Perspectives, ed. Adele E. Clarke and Virginia L. Olesen (New York: Routledge, 1999),
324-342.
Constructing Illness, Medicalizing Society
Peter Wright and Andrew Treacher, “Introduction,” in The Problem of Medical
Knowledge: Examining the Social Construction of Medicine, ed. Peter Wright and Andrew
Treacher (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1982), 1-22.
Phil Brown, “Naming and Framing: The Social Construction of Diagnosis and
Illness,” in Perspectives in Medical Sociology, 2nd ed., ed. Phil Brown (Prospect
Heights, IL: Waveland 1996), 92-122.
Elizabeth M. Armstrong, “Diagnosing Moral Disorder: The Discovery and Evolution of
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome,” Social Science & Medicine 47, no. 12 (1998): 2024-2042.
Paula A. Treichler, How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 11-41 (Chapter 1: “AIDS, Homophobia, and
Biomedical Discourse: An Epidemic of Signification”).
Paul A. Martin, “Genes as Drugs: The Social Shaping of Gene Therapy and the
Reconstruction of Genetic Disease,” in Sociological Perspectives on the New Genetics,
ed. Peter Conrad and Jonathan Gabe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 15-35.
Hilary Arksey, “Expert and Lay Participation in the Construction of Medical
Knowledge,” Sociology of Health & Illness 16, no. 4 (1994): 448-468.
Peter Conrad, “Medicalization and Social Control,” Annual Review of Sociology 18
(1992): 209-232.
Margaret Lock, “Anomalous Ageing: Managing the Postmenopausal Body,” Body &
Society 4, no. 1 (1998): 35-61.
Eugenia Kaw, “Medicalization and Racial Features: Asian American Women and Cosmetic
Surgery,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 7(1991): 74-89.
Stuart S. Blume, “Histories of Cochlear Implantation,” Social Science &
Medicine 49 (1999): 1257-1268.
Constructing Medical Objects and Subjects
Byron J. Good and Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, “‘Learning Medicine’: The
Constructing of Medical Knowledge at Harvard Medical School,” in Knowledge, Power,
and Practice: The Anthropology of Medicine and Everyday Life, ed. Shirley Lindenbaum and
Margaret Lock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 81-107.
Stefan Hirschauer, “The Manufacture of Bodies in Surgery,” Social Studies of
Science 21, no. 2 (May 1991): 279-319.
Monica J. Casper, The Making of the Unborn Patient: A Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 106-134 (Chapter 4: “Working on (and
around) the Unborn Patient: Negotiating Social Order in a Fetal Treatment Unit”).
Stefan Timmermans, “Mutual Tuning of Multiple Trajectories,” Symbolic
Interaction 21, no. 4 (1998): 425-440.
Marc Berg and Geoffrey Bowker, “The Multiple Bodies of the Medical Record: Toward a
Sociology of an Artifact,” The Sociological Quarterly 38, no. 3 (1997): 513-537.
Danièle Carricaburu and Janine Pierret, “From Biographical Disruption to
Biographical Reinforcement: The Case of HIV-Positive Men,” Sociology of Health &
Illness 17, no. 1 (1995): 65-88.
Suzanne J. Kessler, Lessons from the Intersexed (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 1998), 12-32 (Chapter 2: “The Medical Construction of Gender”).
Charis M. Cussins, “Quit Sniveling, Cryo-Baby. We’ll Work Out Which One’s
Your Mama!” in Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots, ed. Robbie Davis-Floyd
and Joseph Dumit (New York: Routledge, 1998), 40-66.
Trust, Authority, and Expertise in Medicine
Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 1982),
9-17 (“The Roots of Authority”).
Renée R. Anspach, Deciding Who Lives: Fateful Choices in the Intensive Care Nursery
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 55-84 (Chapter 3: “Predicting the
Future: Why Physicians and Nurses Disagree”).
Kathryn M. Taylor, “Physicians and the Disclosure of Undesirable Information,”
in Biomedicine Examined, ed. Margaret Lock and Deborah R. Gordon (Dordrecht: Kluwer,
1988), 441-463.
Peter Conrad, “The Meaning of Medications: Another Look at Compliance,” in
Dominant Issues in Medical Sociology, ed. Howard D. Schwartz (New York: Random House,
1987), 209-220.
Sue Fisher, In the Patient’s Best Interest: Women and the Politics of Medical
Decisions (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 29-58 (Chapter 2: “No
More Uterus, No More Babies: How Language Functions in Medical Discourse”).
Richard Gwyn and Glyn Elwyn, “When is a Shared Decision not (Quite) a Shared
Decision? Negotiating Preferences in a General Practice Encounter,” Social Science
& Medicine 49, no. 4 (August 1999): 437-447.
Deborah Lupton, “Consumerism, Reflexivity and the Medical Encounter,” Social
Science & Medicine 45, no. 3 (1997): 373-381.
Standards and Protocols: The Art and Science of Medical Decision Making
Deborah R. Gordon, “Clinical Science and Clinical Expertise: Changing Boundaries
Between Art and Science in Medicine,” in Biomedicine Examined, ed. Margaret Lock and
Deborah R. Gordon (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishing, 1988), 257-295.
Marc Berg, Rationalizing Medical Work: Decision-Support Techniques and Medical Practices
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 79-102 (Chapter 3: “Getting a Tool to Work:
Disciplining a Practice to a Formalism”).
Stefan Timmermans and Marc Berg, “Standardization in Action: Achieving Local
Universality through Medical Protocols,” Social Studies of Science 27 (1997):
273-305.
Monica J. Casper and Adele E. Clarke, “Making the Pap Smear into the ‘Right
Tool’ for the Job: Cervical Cancer Screening in the USA, circa 1940-95,” Social
Studies of Science 28, no. 2 (April 1998): 255-290.
Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its
Consequences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 107-133 (Chapter 3: “The ICD as
Information Infrastructure”).
Clinical Trials and the Politics of Ethics and Objectivity
Harry M. Marks, The Progress of Experiment: Science and Therapeutic Reform in the United
States, 1900-1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 129-163 (“Of methods
and institutions, or the triumph of statistics”; and “Managing chance:
Statistics and therapeutic experiments, 1950-1960).
Evelleen Richards, “The Politics of Therapeutic Evaluation: The Vitamin C and Cancer
Controversy,” Social Studies of Science 18 (1988): 653-701.
Steven Epstein, “Activism, Drug Regulation, and the Politics of Therapeutic
Evaluation in the AIDS Era: A Case Study of ddC and the ‘Surrogate Markers’
Debate,” Social Studies of Science 27, no. 5 (October 1997): 691-726.
Monica J. Casper, The Making of the Unborn Patient: A Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 135-167 (Chapter 5: “Clinical Trials
in Fetal Surgery: Making, Protecting, and Contesting Human Subjects”).
Risk, Uncertainty, Testing
Deborah Lupton, The Imperative of Health: Public Health and the Regulated Body (London:
Sage, 1995), 77-105 (Chapter 3: “Taming Uncertainty: Risk Discourse and Diagnostic
Testing”).
Susan Markens, C.H. Browner, and Nancy Press, “‘Because of the Risks’: How
US Pregnant Women Account for Refusing Prenatal Screening,” Social Science &
Medicine 49 (August 1999): 359-369.
Rayna Rapp, Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in
America (New York: Routledge, 1999), 53-77 (Chapter 3: “The Communication of
Risk”).
Troy Duster, Backdoor to Eugenics (New York: Routledge, 1990), 37-57 (Chapter 3: “The
Genetic Screening of ‘Target’ Populations”).
Dorothy Nelkin, “The Social Dynamics of Genetic Testing: The Case of Fragile-X,”
Medical Anthropology Quarterly 10, no. 4 (1996): 537-550.
Stefan Timmermans and Valerie Leiter, “The Redemption of Thalidomide: Standardizing
the Risk of Birth Defects,” Social Studies of Science 30, no. 1 (February 2000):
41-71.
Health Activism, Body Politics, and the Transformation of Biomedical Research
Mark A. Chesler, “Mobilizing Consumer Activism in Health Care: The Role of Self-Help
Groups,” Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change 13 (1991): 273-305.
Judith D. Auerbach and Anne E. Figert, “Women’s Health Research: Public Policy
and Sociology,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior (Extra issue, 1995): 115-31.
Steven Epstein, “The Construction of Lay Expertise: AIDS Activism and the Forging of
Credibility in the Reform of Clinical Trials,” Science, Technology, & Human
Values 20, no. 4 (Autumn 1995): 408-437.
Patricia A. Kaufert, “Women, Resistance, and the Breast Cancer Movement,” in
Pragmatic Women and Body Politics, ed. Margaret Lock and Patricia A. Kaufert (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), 287-308.
Diane E. Goldstein, “Communities of Suffering and the Internet,” forthcoming in
Health 4, no. 3 (2000): 309-323.
The New Political Economy of Health: “Providers,” “Consumers,” and
Corporations
Robert Kuttner, “The American Health Care System: Health Insurance Coverage,”
New England Journal of Medicine 340, no. 2 (14 January 1999): 163-168.
Peter Conrad and Phil Brown, “Rationing Medical Care: A Sociological
Reflection,” in Health, Illness, and Healing, ed. Kathy Charmaz and Debora A.
Paterniti (Los Angeles: Roxbury, 1999), 582-590.
Carroll L. Estes, Charlene Harrington, and Solomon Davis, “The Medical-Industrial
Complex,” in Health Policy and Nursing, ed. Charlene Harrington and Carroll L. Estes
(Boston: Jones and Bartlett, 1994), 54-69.
Donald W. Light, “Countervailing Power: The Changing Character of the Medical
Profession in the United States,” in Perspectives in Medical Sociology, 2nd ed., ed.
Phil Brown (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland 1996), 650-664.
Jerome P. Kassirer and Marcia Angell, “The High Price of Product Endorsement,”
New England Journal of Medicine 337, no. 10 (4 September 1997): 700.
Alan F. Holmer, “Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising Builds Bridges
Between Patients and Physicians,” JAMA 281, no. 4 (27 January 1999): 380.
Matthew F. Hollon, “Direct-to-Consumer Marketing of Prescription Drugs: Creating
Consumer Demand,” JAMA 281, no. 4 (27 January 1999): 382.
David Shenk, “Money + Science = Ethics Problems on Campus,” The Nation, 22 March
1999, 11-18.
Daniel M. Fox, “Comment: Epidemiology and the New Political Economy of
Medicine,” American Journal of Public Health 89, no. 4 (April 1999): 493-496.
Theda Skocpol, “The Rise and Resounding Demise of the Clinton Health Plan,”
Health Affairs 14 (Spring 1995): 66-85.
Syllabus
- Rogers State University
Required Texts:
Peter Freund and Meredith McGuire, 1999, Health, Illness, and the Social Body: A Critical
Sociology, Third Edition, Prentice Hall: New Jersey
Catalog Description:
An examination of sociological perspectives on systems of medical care; particular
emphasis will be placed upon the structure and organization of health care institutions
and societal response to problems of illness and disease. Prerequisite: six hours of
social science.
Course Objectives:
The aim of the course is to provide an introduction to sociological perspectives of
medicine through an analysis of the writings of recent theorists, social observers, and
researchers. We will investigate such topics as Epidemiology, medicalization, the
organization of medical care, new technologies, and health care reform.
Unit: Topics: Presentations: Readings:
1) Epidemiology disease
stress and illness
superbugs
access to care
ebola/lassa fever
Aids Introduction
Medical Sociology
Measures of Health
Access
Stress and Health
Superbugs Chapter 1-4
2) Medicalization of society social support
sick role
deviance
mental illness
chronic illness and disability
alternative healing Mental Illness and OK Law
The Myth of Mental Illness Chapters 5-8
3) Health Care Systems England
Canada
Japan
Sweden Health Care in Japan
Health Care in Sweden
U.S. Fee for Service
Midterm Exam
4) Health Care Organizations I hospitals
nursing homes
AMA
insurance companies
pharmaceutical companies
HMOs
Public Health Social Control of Medicine
Physicians and Profit
Hospitals Today
Nursing Homes
Health Care Costs
Uninsured Americans Chapter 9
5) New Technologies reproductive
transplants
genetic revolution
and bioethics Animal Transplants
Medical Technology Chapter 10
6) Health Care Organizations II physicians
hospitals
labor
medical Supplies
pharmaceuticals
surgery The AMA and Pharmaceuticals
The Coming of the Corporations
Physicians and the Corporations
Controlling Hospital Costs Chapter 11
7) Health Care Reform quality
costs
access
government and the market The Iron Triangle
Issues of the '90s
Tertiary and Primary Care
A Cultural Affair Chapter 12
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