Mapping the Sociology of Health and Medicine: America, Britain and Australia Compared

Mapping the sociology of health and medicine: America, Britain and Australia comparedby Fran CollyerISBN: 9780230320444; Palgrave Macmillan,Basingstoke, England; 2012; 326 pagesThis is a fascinating book. It provides a comparative institutional history of the specialist field of health sociology since 1990 in three countries: the USA, the UK and Australia. It comprises six chapters, including one empiri- cal chapter, the fifth chapter, which is based on a content analysis of key publications and authors from the three countries under investigation. It is a 'who's who' of the sociology of health and medi- cine. Who are the gurus? While the examination of medicine as a social institution in the work of Parsons in 1951 in The Social System is acknowl- edged as seminal, the real guru in medical sociol- ogy in the USA is Elliot (sic.) Freidson. In Britain, the work of Bryan S. Turner is prominent, and in Australia, Evan Willis. And there are omissions. Where is the sophisticated and influential work of Renee Fox in the USA, for example?Collyer's book really does provide a service to the sub-discipline, variously referred to as medical soci- ology in America and Britain, and health sociology in Australia. And it is a significant speciality, comprising between a quarter to one-third of these countries' professional associations (p. 1). Collyer takes an 'institutional approach' that involves an investigation of the interconnections between social practices, bodies of knowledge and forms of organisation. The institutional histories in the three counties are fascinating: key institutions include the London School of Economics in the UK; the Australian National University in Australia, and the 'golden age' for medical sociology in the United States, according to William Cockerham, through the fifties and sixties, occurred most notably at Yale, Harvard, Columbia and Chicago. Discipline-based departments, associations and academic journals, and public and private sources of support, provide the basis for these historical trajectories.The content analysis in Chapter 5 is conducted on 811 papers published in seven journals: Four from Australia; one from the USA and two from the UK; published between 1990 and 2010 in which 361 papers are from Australia, 225 from the United Kingdom and 225 from the United States. So, clearly it is not a representative sample, with Australian papers significantly over-represented and the United States under-represented. Papers are analysed according to gender, numbers of authors, university affiliation and organisational context, and whether the papers are 'critical or sympathetic towards medicine' (p. 194).Collyer's investigation concludes there is an increasing likelihood of being in receipt of medical funding if one identifies with a health or medi- cal discipline rather than sociology per se (p. 245). Similarly, sociologists are more likely to be critical rather than sympathetic towards medicine (p. 252). This raises the thorny issue of whether and how sociology as a discipline is in collegial rather than subordinate relations with medicine. And where does this leave the dual qualified medical sociolo- gists, including Howard Waitzkin in the USA, David Armstrong in the UK and Peter Sainsbury in Australia? On this issue, of relations between the profession of medicine and the discipline of sociology, I am rather surprised Collyer has not drawn on Homo Academicus, the most pertinent work of Pierre Bourdieu, and its brilliant analysis of the disproportionate prestige, power and influ- ence enjoyed by the traditional professions such as medicine and law in the French higher education system, vis a vis academic disciplines such as the humanities and social sciences. …

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.