علم الاجتماع الطبي والنظريات الاجتماعية المتعلقة بالصحة والمرض

الملخص EN

According to the functionalist perspective, health is vital to the stability of the society, and therefore sickness is a sanctioned form of deviance.

Talcott Parsons(1951) was the first to discuss this in terms of expectations that define appropriate behavior for the sick and for those who take care of them.

according to Parsons, the sick person has a specific role with both rights and responsibilities.

To start with, The patient has not chosen to be sick and should not be treated as responsible for their condition (sickness).

The sick person also has the right of being excempted from normal social roles.

The patient is not required to fulfill the obligations of a well person and can avoid their normal responsibilities and duties without censure.

However, this excemption is temporary and relative to the severity of the illness.

The excemption also requires legitimation by a physician, that is, a physician must certify that the illnes is genuine and that it must be taken seriously.

The resposibility of the sick person is two fold, to try to get well and to seek technically competent help from a physician.

If the sick person stays ill longer then it is appropriate (malinges) they may be stigmatized.

Parsons agrees that since the sick are unable to fulfill the normal social roles, their sickness weakens the society.

Therefore, it is sometimes necessary for various forms of social control to bring the behavior of a sick person back in line with normal expectations.

In this model of health, doctors serve as gatekeepers, deciding who is healthy and who is sick- a relation- ship in which the doctor has all the power.

Symbolic Interaction perspective: The cental principle of the interactionist perspective is that the meaning we derive from and attribute to the world around us is a social construction produced by everyday social interaction.

This perspective is focused on how we interpret the symbols to communicate with each other, how we create and maintain the reality that we believe to be true.

Health and illness are socially constructed, physical and mental conditions have little to no objective reality but instead are considered healthy or ill conditions only if they are defined as such by a society.

Physicians manage the situation to display their authority and medical knowledge.

Conflict Perspective Theorists using conflict perspective suggest that issues with the health care systems, as most other social problems are rooted in the capitalist society.

According to conflict theorists, capitalism and the pursue of profit lead to the commodification of health, the changing of something not is generally thought of as a commodity into something can be bought and sold in a market place.

In this view, people with money and power-the dominant group -are the ones who make decisions about how the health care system will be run.

They therefore ensure that they will have health coverage, while simultaneously insuring that subordinate groups stay subordinate through lack of access.

This creates significant health care and health disparities between the dominant and subordinate group.

Alongside the health disparities created by class inequalities, there are several health disparities created by racism, gender, sexism, and ageism.

When health is a commodity, the poor are more likely to experience illness caused by poor diet, to live and work in an unhealthy environment, and one is less likely to challenge the system in which they live.

Feminist Perspective: Feminist perspective concentrates primarily on gender quality.

It focuses on the exploitation of women by men in the society.

The feminist theory analyzes the status of women and men in the society with having the potential to better the women’s life and allow women to gain equal rights as men.

The feminist theory also concentrates on women within their race, class, ethnicity, and age.

However, they mostly focus on giving women the right to speak out their opinion in public and allow them to contribute in the society equally with the other genders.

Feminism is divided into different groups, those are: Radical, liberal, and Marxist feminist.

Each group analyzes and explains the differences between women and men within society.

Post-structural perspective: Medical knowledge no less than medical practice is socially constructed.

In turn, it is argued, medical knowledge contributes to the shaping of social relations.

Furthermore, the objects of medical science are not what they appear to be, the stable realities of the human body and disease are in fact fabricated.

Medical dominance is a form of social control.