The Sociology of Health and Illness

Peter Conrad is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Brandeis University. His work focuses on the sociology of health and illness, deviance, medicalization, new genetics, and the sociology of ADHD. He has published over 100 articles and a dozen books, including The Medicalization of Society (2007), and most recently, coedited Global Perspectives on ADHD (2018). He received the Lee Founder's Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems (for lifetime contributions) and the Leo G. Reeder Award for "outstanding contributions to medical Sociology" from the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. Valerie Leiter is Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at Simmons College. She received the Irving K. Zola Award for Emerging Scholars in Disability Studies. Much of her work focuses on children and youth with disabilities, including her book, Their Time has Come: Youth with Disabilities on the Cusp of Adulthood (Rutgers University Press). She has two current projects, one focused on individuals' experiences with autoimmune conditions, and the other on the Food and Drug Administration's regulation of women's health medical devices. Her teaching addresses health and illness, disability, children and youth, and sociological methods.

PART I. THE SOCIAL PRODUCTION OF DISEASE AND THE MEANINGS OF ILLNESS
Chapter 1. The Social Nature of Disease
Reading 1. Medical Measures and the Decline of Mortality - John B. McKinlay and Sonja M. McKinlay
Reading 2. Social Conditions as Fundamental Causes of Health Inequalities - Jo C. Phelan, Bruce G. Link and Parisa Tehranifar
Chapter 2. Who Gets Sick? The Unequal Social Distribution of Disease
Reading 3. Social Class, Susceptibility, and Sickness - S. Leonard Syme and Lisa F. Berkman
Reading 4. Racism and Health: Pathways and Scientific Evidence - David R. Williams and Selina A. Mohammed
Reading 5. Sex, Gender, and Vulnerability - Rachel C. Snow
Reading 6. Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine - Paul E. Farmer et al.
Reading 7. A Case of Refocusing Upstream: The Political Economy of Illness - John B. McKnight
Chapter 3. Our Sickening Social and Physical Environments
Reading 8. Social Relationships and Health - James S. House, Karl R. Landis and Debra Umberson
Reading 9. The Health Politics of Asthma - Phil Brown et al.
Reading 10. Dying Alone: The Social Production of Urban Isolation - Eric Klinenberg
Chapter 4. The Social and Cultural Meanings of Illness
Reading 11. Morality and Health: News Media Constructions of Overweight and Eating Disorders - Abigail C. Saguy and Kjerstin Gruys
Reading 12. Illness Meaning of AIDS Among Women with HIV: Merging Immunology and Life Experience - Alison Scott
Reading 13. Whose Deaths Matter?: Mortality, Advocacy, and Attention to Disease in the Mass Media - Elizabeth M. Armstrong, Dan Carpenter and Marie E. Hojnacki
Chapter 5. The Experience of Illness
Reading 14. Electronic Support Groups, Patient-Consumers, and Medicalization: The Case of Contested Illness - Kristin K. Barker
Reading 15. The Meaning of Medications: Another Look at Compliance - Peter Conrad
Reading 16. Being-in-Dialysis: The Experience of the Machine-Body for Home Dialysis Users - Rhonda Shaw
PART II. THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF MEDICAL CARE
Chapter 6. The Rise and Fall of the Dominance of Medicine
Reading 17. Professionalization, Monopoly, and the Structure of Medical Practice - Peter Conrad and Joseph W. Schneider
Reading 18. Notes on the Decline of Midwives and the Rise of Medical Obstetricians - Richard W. Wertz and Dorothy C. Wertz
Reading 19. The End of the Golden Age of Doctoring - John B. McKinlay and Lisa D. Marceau
Reading 20. Countervailing Power: The Changing Character of the Medical Profession in the United States - Donald W. Light
Chapter 7. Other Providers In and Out of Medicine
Reading 21. A Caring Dilemma: Womanhood and Nursing in Historical Perspective - Susan Reverby
Reading 22. From Quackery to "Complementary" Medicine: The American Medical Profession Confronts Alternative Therapies - Terri A. Winnick
Chapter 8. Pharmaceuticalization
Reading 23. From Lydia Pinkham to Queen Levitra: Direct-to-Consumer Advertising and Medicalization - Peter Conrad and Valerie Leiter
24.Prescriptions and Proscriptions: Moralizing Sleep Medications - Jonathan Gabe, Catherine M. Coveney and Simon J. Williams
Chapter 9. Financing Medical Care
Reading 25. Paying for Health Care - Thomas Bodenheimer and Kevin Grumbach
Reading 26. The Origins of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - Jill Quadagno
Reading 27. The Debate Over Health Care Rationing: Deja Vu All Over Again - Alan B. Cohen
Chapter 10. Medicine in Practice
Reading 28. The Struggle Between the Voice of Medicine and the Voice of the Lifeworld - Elliot G. Mishler
Reading 29. Cultural Brokerage: Creating Linkages Between Voices of Lifeworld and Medicine in Cross-Cultural Clinical Settings - Ming-Cheng Miriam Lo
Reading 30. Social Death as Self-Fulfilling Prophecy - Stefan Timmermans
Reading 31. "I want you to save my kid!": Illness management strategies, access, and inequality at an elite university research hospital - Amanda M. Gengler
Chapter 11. Dilemmas of Medical Technology
Reading 32. Medical Sociology and Technology: Critical Engagements - Monica J. Casper and Daniel R. Morrison
Reading 33. "It just becomes much more complicated": Genetic Counselors' Views on Genetics and Prenatal Testing - Susan Markens
PART III. CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL DEBATES
Chapter 12. The Relevance of Risk
Reading 34. Risk as Moral Danger: The Social and Political Functions of Risk - Deborah Lupton
Reading 35. The Pursuit of Preventive Care for Chronic Illness: Turning Healthy People into Chronic Patients - Meta J. Kreiner and Linda M. Hunt
Chapter 13. The Medicalization of American Society
Reading 36. Medicine as an Institution of Social Control - Irving Kenneth Zola
Reading 37. The Shifting Engines of Medicalization - Peter Conrad
Reading 38. The Best Laid Plans? Women's Choices, Expectations and Experiences in Childbirth - Claudia Malacrida and Tiffany Boulton
Reading 39. C-Section Epidemic - Theresa Morris
PART IV: EXPANDING HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE
Chapter 14. Illness, Medicine, and the Internet
Reading 40. Illness and the Internet: From Private to Public Experience - Peter Conrad, Julia Bandini and Alexandria Vasquez
Reading 41. It's Like Having a Physician in Your Pocket! A Critical Analysis of Self-Diagnosis Smartphone Apps - Deborah Lupton and Annemarie Jutel
Chapter 15. Prevention, Movements, and Social Change
Reading 42. Politicizing Health Care - John McKnight
Reading 43. Embodied Health Movements: Uncharted Territory in Social Movement Research - Phil Brown et al.
Chapter 16. Global Issues
Reading 44. Health Inequalities in Global Context - Jason Beckfield, Sigrun Olafsdottir and Elyas Bakhtiari
Reading 45. The Impending Globalization of ADHD: Notes on the Expansion and Growth of a Medicalized Disorder - Peter Conrad and Meredith R. Bergey
Reading 46. International Medical Migration: The Global Movements of Doctors and Nurses - Hannah Bradby