The Sociology of Health and Illness: Its Present State, Future Prospects and Potential for Health Research

This paper describes the origins and development of the sociology of health and illness in Britain and shows that these were rooted in practical concerns, rather than deriving from sociological theory or general sociology. Medical practitioners and researchers, health administrators, patients and the feminist movement have been influences encouraging sociologists to turn their attention to health and illness. The present state of the subdiscipline is one of great activity, but little theoretical or methodological unity. The contribution to the subject of Parsons, Freidson and Mechanic, the marxists, the British post-Fabians, empiricists and phenomenologists are discussed, as is the contribution of the subdiscipline to health and health policy research. In considering the future of the subject, a sociology of health and illness rather than of medicine is proposed and the inevitable moral and political implications of sociological activity in this area are exposed. The need to face the implications of suffering for social relations in health care and the tendency to ignore these is discussed. The wide-ranging importance of the sociology of health and illness to general sociology is stressed and its potential contribution to health and health policy assessed