Sociology of Health and Illness (P01151)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 11 ? Acronym : SPS-P-SPS

This course will seek to understand biomedicine by exploring multiple domains: the market relations that commodify health care; the work sites in which medical practice is articulated; the research arenas that transform medical knowledge, practice and technologies; the systems of cultural meaning within which ideas of health and disease circulate; the social inequalities that structure the experience of illness and access to care; the social movements that challenge biomedical authority and expertise; and the bodies and selves that experience and are remade by illness.

Entry Requirements

none

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Postgraduate (School of Social and Political Studies), (School of Social and Political Studies, Schedule J)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : Postgraduate

? Delivery Period : To be arranged/Unknown

? Contact Teaching Time : 2 hour(s) per week for 10 weeks

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course students should have an advanced knowledge and understanding of key concepts and theoretical approaches within the sociology of health and illness, with specific reference to:
1. the nature and status of medical power/knowledge and professional dominance in contemporary western societies
2. social diversity and inequalities in health within contemporary western societies
3. concepts and experiences of health and illness, and the social nature of relations between medical and lay worlds
4. processes of social transformation and change in health, medicine and society