The Social Construction

of Health and Illness

Complete chapter taken from the published version of OCR Sociology for AS (2012) that covers:

• Defining health (both positive and negative state models).

• Defining illness and sickness (including an outline of the Sick Role).

• Approaches to health and illness through two opposing models (biomedical and social).

• The distinction between rates of morbidity and mortality.

• Cultural relativity of health and illness.

• Lay definitions of health and illness.

• The social process of becoming ill.

Patterns and Explanations

for Ill-health in Society

Complete chapter taken from the published version of OCR Sociology for AS (2012) that covers patterns of ill-health and four types of explanation:

1. Artefact and measurement

2. Natural/social selection

3. Cultural/behavioural factors

4. Structural and material factors.

The Social Construction of Mental Illness and Disability

Complete chapter taken from the published version of OCR Sociology for AS (2012) that covers:

• Biomedical, Psychological and Sociological models of mental illness.

• Structural and Interactionist explanations based on categories of class, gender and ethnicity.

• Individual / medical and social models of disability.

The Role of Health Professionals

in Society

Complete chapter taken from the published version of OCR Sociology for AS (2012) that covers four sociological perspectives:

• Functionalist, with the main focus on the role of health systems and health professionals.

• Marxist, looking at medicine in terms of its production and consumption and how it operates as a system of political and ideological social control.

• Weberian where the emphasis is on the role of status groups and hierarchies.

• Feminist, where the focus is on women as objects of medical attention.

The chapter also examines the rise of complementary / alternative medicine, their challenge to – and the critical response of – conventional forms of medicine.