Midterm Studying flashcards
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Sociology is a scientific approach to understanding people in society. • Social structures can often exert more influence over our behavior than expected
Sociological perspectives on health emphasize that it is vital to fully understand the social to understand health and illness
The sociological imagination invites us to think beyond our subjective perceptions.
Sociological theories help move away from commonsense understandings of society.
Modern medicine emerged from the Enlightenment, a critical historical period when society became secular and scientific replaced religious explanations of the natural world. •
The medical model of health stresses a mechanistic view of the body and a reliance on biological causation to explain illness. •
The social model provides a holistic approach, stressing that health and illness can only be explained by analyzing the social.
Theories of well-being attempt to capture a holistic and rounded account of people’s lives, going beyond simple binaries of health and illness.
Traditional and alternative medicine provides other ways of understanding and interpreting health.
The history of health and healing is not simply the history of medicine
Historical view of health and healing reveals the importance of the social dimension of health
It is fundamental changes in society that lead to new diseases and new ways of healing.
The health and well-being of all human, animal, and plant life are endangered by human-driven climate change.
Climate change worsens existing social and health inequalities, with less powerful social groups more adversely affected by rises in temperature and sea levels.
Sociological theories of climate change and well-being must move beyond centering humanity and include other species.
Green and blue spaces improve well-being through various physical, symbolic, and cultural mechanisms.
A relationship exists between income inequality and health inequality.
The more equal a society is the better the health of that society and a range of other social issues.
The more unequal a society the worse the health of that society, and a range of other social issues.
Inequality does not only affect those in lower socio-economic groups but affects everyone in a gradient.
Inequality has increased both in individual countries and globally.
Inequality leads to health problems by creating a fragmented, less cohesive society where those at the bottom are vilified and disempowered from being able to make the kind of changes that would make their lives healthier.
Gender is more than a binary distinction between male and female. Multiple ways of being gendered exist. •
Gender emerges out of social structures and performances of gender.
• How the gender order is constructed in a particular context influences health and well-being.
• People can interpret and negotiate gendered performances, which influences how care, illness and recovery are experienced.
• Deeper social structural changes in gender provide the surest way to reduce gender inequalities in health.
Black, Asian, people of colour and minority ethnic groups often experience worse health and wellbeing than the majority ethnic population.
Indigenous people in countries that were formed through colonialism can also experience poor health and wellbeing.
For example: in 2017 in the USA Black male life expectancy was 71.9 compared to white male expectancy of 76.4 (CDC 2019).
Racism plays an important role in the poor health and wellbeing of people of colour and indigenous people.
How racism is experienced is influenced by context
Using the concepts and categories of racer and ethnicity requires critical thinking as they can be misused or misunderstood.
• Many more people in contemporary society are reporting and experiencing distress and depression.
• Sociology helps us understand how mental health is framed in and by society.
• The attitudes of others and wider society greatly affect the well-being of those experiencing distress.
• Wider social inequalities are also visible in the distribution of diagnosed and reported mental health problems.
Perceptions of the body, what we do with our bodies, how the body is regulated, for example, are all influenced by society.
• A morality is attached to the presentation of the body in contemporary society.
• Chronic illness leads to ‘biographical disruption’, where the ‘taken-for-granted’ aspects of life and identity are thrown into question.
• The medical model of disability locates the causes of disability in the individual body.
• The social model of disability locates the causes of disability as a form of social oppression and discrimination.
• Old age and ill health are not synonymous, with the majority of older people living fit, healthy and active lives.
• Older people may be subject to ageist stereotyping and this can impact identity and sense of self.
• It is important to understand ageing as taking place in biographical and historical times.
• Experiences across the life course strongly influence the health of older people.
Vocab
Unit 1:
Sociology - the study of interaction between groups and individuals in society
Bruce (1999) sociology - offers a scientific approach to understanding society.
Structure - the factors that help determine our experiences through the establishment of ways of behaving
Agency - individuals do not simply act out predetermined roles but ‘interpret’ that role in a way unique to them
Sociological imagination - a specific way to think about the world beyond our experiences. It challenges thinking about society as common assumptions or obvious explanations of human society and behavior.
Functionalism - society is like parts of a functioning whole. Society is consensual; everyone is “doing their part” to keep it running smoothly.
Symbolic Interactionism - the unique nature of the social world is made up of the actions of the participants motivated by human consciousness.
Sick Role Theory - The rights and responsibilities of an ill person ensure the functioning of society
Sick Roles - Rights, time off to get better, excused responsibility for being ill, compliance with the doctor, and doing whatever you can to return to health.
Feminism - explains social structures as fundamentally based on inequalities between women and men.
Gender blindness - a criticism of traditional sociological theories
Marxism - the focus of class inequalities as being fundamental to understanding society
Capitalism as a social system depends on inequalities and exploitation
Post-modernism - a critical focus on how power relations come to being and uncovering their social construction.
Neo-materialism - people are not central to how we should understand the world
Material Agents - Anything that possesses some form fo power (viruses, animals, nature, technology)
Unit 2:
The Enlightenment - brought a scientific and secular perspective of illness. No longer divine retribution and ‘demonic possession’ at the expense of integrated and holistic approaches to health
Medical Model of Health - Health is an outcome of biological factors. The body is like a ‘repairable’ machine where all illnesses have a specific cause and prioritizes the professional expert over the lay individual.
Social Model of Health - a holistic, multidimensional approach of health as social rather than biological in cause.
Jewson’s three paradigms of medical knowledge - Bedside Medicine, Clinical Medicine, Laboratory Medicine
Bedside Medicine - disease is a psychosomatic experience to be treated at home
Clinical Medicine - there is a specific aetiology of diseases that requires specialist practitioners who understand it, so it has to be treated in a hospital
Laboratory Medicine - disease is a biomechanical disturbance where special practitioners who understand cellular construction of the body treat it in the laboratory
Power - the ability to ensure that a particular point of view prevails in a disputed situation; the capacity to ensure that someone acts in a certain way; the ability to stifle opposition to a particular perspective
Latrogenesis - harm caused by doctors/cultural dependence on medical practitioners
Well-being - complex and multifaceted; viewed variously as happiness, satisfaction, enjoyment, contentment, engagement, fulfilment
Alternative medicine embraces any medical practice that falls outside the boundaries of conventional medicine.
Reasons for alternative medicine - the rise of individualism, subcultural values of baby boomers, holistic and equal relationships, growing dissociation from civic and mainstream society, negative experiences with mainstream medicine
Limits of biomedicine - does not emphasize causes of illness, is preoccupied with relieving symptoms, has harmful side effects, and uses invasive treatment.
Benefits of alternative medicine - explains disease causes in the context of someone’s lifestyle, treats the whole person.
Alternative medicine in postmodern society - expresses a desire for self-determination and choice, challenging the dominance of biomedicine.
Traditional medicine - dominant in the global south, draws on the experiences, beliefs, and cultures of a society
Unit 3:
Zoonotic disease - the ‘jump’ in spread of disease from animals to humans
Ancient Greek Medicine - health involves the valance of self, society, and nature
The four humors - Sanguine (blood, spring, air), choleric (yellow bile, summer, fire), melancholy (black bile, autumn, earth), phlegmatic (phlegm, winter, water)
Many of the main developments in biomedicine occur after a decline in the death rates from major infectious disease
Unit 4:
Anthropocene - current epoch where human activity is now driving deep changes on the planet
Climate change is an example of human activity fundamentally altering the planet
Causes of climate change - development of electricity, reorganizing energy-dense transportation systems, widespread use of cars, suburban living out of town leisure sites, increase in mobilities
Chicago heatwave - 739 deaths adversely affecting African American communities by a factor of 1.5, unequal experience of climate change
Xuan-Thuy National Park - The rising sea level is causing saltwater intrusion, killing farmland and wildlife, disease running rampant, and people are moving away from the area
Landscapes - an assemblage of features, memories, cultures, and symbols associated with well-being and provides a source of identity and human activity
Greenspace - public parks, forest walks, areas with trees, grass, and plants
Blue space - bodies of water like lakes, seasides, streams, and rivers
Unit 5:
Causes of Inequality growth - changes in the labor market, government policy, and the expansion of financial capital
Countries with high-income inequality have worse health than poorer, equal countries.
Class and health gradient - shows how unequal societies create toxic societies through alienation, fragmentation, and lack of social cohesion.
Social problems are translated into health problems via psycho-social pathways.
Rosetto, PA - had fewer deaths from heart disease than the rest of the us due to strong social cohesion.
Material Disempowerment - occurs when the money or resources are simply not there to provide adequate nutrition, shelter, or clothing. This form of disempowerment can have a relative or absolute dimension.
Psychosocial Disempowerment - occurs when people lack the control over their lives to make the kind of decisions that would be beneficial for their overall health and well-being.
Political Disempowerment - occurs when people do not have the control over their lives to make the kind of decisions that would benefit their overall health and well-being.
Structural problems need to be faced and overcome more than asking for individual change.
Unit 6:
Gender order - distributes power unequally across different genders
Hegemonic masculinity
complicit masculinity
subordinate masculinity
subordinate femininity
Gender Performativity - the acting of gender roles creates gender; rejects that gender is determined by biological processes
Masculinity - influences male behavior rather than determining it, works in nuanced ways
HIV transmission in Malawi - women forced to be prostitutes to support their families due to lack of economic and gender power
Wixarika community - colonial Spanish rule eliminated pre-existing gender relations, resulting in unequal patriarchal gender order.
Unit 7:
Race - A concept loaded with historical connotations, myths, and misunderstandings; no basis in science and used to differentiate between people based on social and historical processes.
Ethnicity - the cultural practices and heritage of a group of people; can be used to refer to or imply people of color.
Ethnoization - the spurious ascription of certain diseases to specific ethnic groups (sickle-cell anemia, malaria, ebola).
Racism and general health and well-being are linked.
Racism - an organized system premised on the categorization and ranking of social groups into races and devalues, disempowers, and differentially allocates desirable societal opportunities and resources to racial groups regarded as inferior.
Structural racism - how racism came to be in the first place; deeply embedded and woven into society and produces a set of ideas, norms, and practices that become part of assumptions in a given society
Institutional racism - how public and private bodies and institutions can often act in a way that produces unequal care and treatment for people from ethnic minorities
Interpersonal racism - everyday encounters of name-calling, abusive terms, stereotyping, physical aggression, dismissal, and treating those from ethnic minorities as though they are not worthy of respect.
Place and racism - how groups of people are structurally racialized in different societies influences health and well-being
Unit 8: Mental Health & Emotional Distress
Judgments about health and illness reflect norms in time and place
Biological Determinism - the idea that a person's behavior and characteristics are primarily determined by their genes, rather than by environmental or social factors
Cultural Determinism -
Mental illness - highly stigmatized, carries specific social consequences surrounding danger and violence
Stigma - an attribute that is deeply discrediting, used to delineate social differences, reflects power relationships, and often contested by groups who have it
Three types of stigmas - physical deformities, character blemishes, tribal (social)
Unit 9: Sexualities & Health
Sexuality - socially constructed to a society’s norms and traditions, acceptability varies by time and space
homophobia - negative attitudes, discrimination, and prejudice against queer people
heteronormative - the primacy and dominance of heterosexuality in society that marginalizes other sexualities
Health and LGBT - mental health, alcohol and substance abuse, aging, HIV/AIDS
Unit 10: Sociology of the Body: Chronic Illness & Disability
The body is both a biological and social entity
Biographical disruption - the destabilization and questioning of identity after the onset of chronic illness
Impacts of treatment regimens - the affective and technical aspects of treatment
Adaptation and management of illness - dealing with stigma and presenting as ‘normal’
Language reflects power issues in society
Medical model of disability - disability seen as (1) located in the individual, (2) a tragedy, (3) needing professional help
Social model of disability - disability seen as a consequence of (1) social attitudes, (2) design, (3) lack of civil rights
Unit 11: Health, Aging, & the Life Course
Aging - emerges out of the interplay of society, biology, and psychology
ageism - a set of beliefs originating in biological variation related to the agin process; the actions of corporate bodies and their agent and the resulting views of ordinary people
disengagement theory of aging - a functionalist theory that argues that older people relinquish their roles as they go through life so as to minimize social disruption on their retirement and death
dependency theory of aging - theory that focuses on the economic restriction and lack of access to social and cultural resources that face older people
Third Age Theory - states that old age can be a “golden age” full of self-realization, personal growth, and the fulfillment of lifetime ambitions; is made possible by older people having higher disposable incomes and access to consumer culture
Life cycle - a static set of phases that are passed through by everyone and that are outside of their control
life course - implies a fluid approach to passing through life where the individual has more agency to act and do as they want
Historical time - the circumstances in which a person lived and the attitudes they held
Biographical time - the events and experiences that shaped a person’s life
Good and bad experiences are recorded on the body
joint pain - a normal part of biography for older people; as a consequence of old age/personal history
Aspiration to positive aging results in ‘playing down’ of symptoms
dementia and social death - length fatal illness, deeper old age, loss of personhood
responses of carers to social death - accepting but not behaving, accepting and behaving, not accepting and not behaving
Unit 12: Pandemics and Society
pandemic - disease spread involving wide geographic extension, disease movement, high attack rates, and explosiveness, minimal population immunity, novelty, infectiousness, contagiousness, and severity
Sociologists are interested in the social and scientific processes of how an event becomes classified as a pandemic
zoonosis - when infections ‘jump’ from one species to another
Spanish flue of 1918 - started from the zoonotic transfer from birds to humans, killing 60 million worldwide
Pandemics interact with pre-existing social trends, social relations and social inequalities
epidemic psychology - within pandemics there are parallel social epidemics of fear, stigmatization, explanation, moralization, and action
medical populism - the over-simplification of complex medical problems
political populism - the over-simplification of complex social problems
stigmatization and pandemics - social groups can be singled out to blame for the spread of disease (ex: kung-flu language)
