166-091 Sociology of Health and Illness

Note

Availability

Credit Points

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Usually Sociology 1A and Sociology 1B.

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

This subject examines how medical knowledge, practice, and technology, as well as individual and group experiences of health and illness, are socially shaped and organised. The subject begins with analyses of the medical profession, of medical education, and of medical-state relations. We focus here on struggles around the formation and maintenance of professional dominance. The subject then considers the social experience of health and illness in terms of relations including gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and class, with specific reference to HIV/AIDS as a case study. Questions of power and vulnerability shape our analysis of the interaction between social location and health and illness. Attention will then be turned to technological and scientific developments in medicine, and their role in the social construction of medicine and of medical practice. Of particular interest here will be developments in organ transplantation and cloning; and developments in the global biomedical and biotechnology industries, and the significance of those developments for local research and medical practice. Students will have the opportunity to explore issues raised in the course through a research paper.

Assessment

A major research paper of 3000 words, and a take-home test of 1000 words.

Prescribed Texts

A tutorial reading pack will be made available in the first week of semester.

• C Grbich (ed), Health in Australia. Sociological Concepts and Issues. Prentice Hall 1996.