Medical Sociology

Catalog description

Sociology is concerned with the social causes and consequences of human behavior. Medical sociology focuses on the social causes and consequences of health and illness, bringing sociological perspectives, theories, and methods to study health, illness, and medical practice. This course introduces students to medical sociology by exploring three major areas of discussion: 1) the social determinants of health: how can race, class, and gender intersect to produce disease and disability for some and wellness for others? 2) the social construction of Illness: how cultural conceptions can help explain why people with the same illness experience different subjectivities depending on where they are geographically? 3) the political economy of medicine: how the U.S. health care system is serving as a tool for social control and neoliberal accumulation? We will read material that addresses the U.S. case at large, but we will complement our leaning with comparative cases from other countries.