Health sociology essay

Social class has constantly been an essential idea in medical sociology, showing its empirical value for the understanding of ‘health chances’ for the private ever given that the early years of this century when Stevenson built a classification based upon father’s profession for the purpose of analysing baby mortality in England and Wales.

The sociology of health and illness is concerned with the social origins of and influences on disease, rather than the professional interests of medicine that examine health and illness from its biological development and regards illness as a malfunction of the human body.

Marxist claims that health problems are closely tied to unhealthy and stressful work environments. Rather than seeing health problems as the result of individual weakness, they should be seen in terms of the unequal social structure and class disadvantage that are reproduced under capitalism.

There is sustained application of post-modernist ideas to the sociology of health and medicine, although there is certainly an interest among many to explore their relevance for the field. The objective of sociologists of postmodernity is to understand the nature of contemporary postmodern society.