ABSTRACT
The differences between the ways in which medicine and everyday thinking represent matters of health and illness have been well documented in recent years (Helman 1984; Calnan 1987)). Most of this work deals with ‘lay beliefs’ or common-sense thinking about health and illness in relation to individuals’ experiences. Moreover, most studies consider the experiences of these individuals in relation to their encounters with clinical medicine, whether in primary care or hospital settings. It has now been clearly demonstrated that the ways of seeing illness and talking about it that sociologists call lay beliefs are often quite distinctive in form and content (Blaxter 1983; Williams 1986). The challenge they pose to medical knowledge and power remains largely implicit, emerging perhaps only in the high rates of noncompliance to be found in patients’ responses to medical directives (Belcon et al. 1984) or, more dramatically and less frequently, where individual patients take grievances to court (see Dingwall in this volume). For the most part, however sophisticated and sociologically illuminating the knowledge expressed in lay beliefs may be, it remains disorganised and ad hoc, posing little if any direct challenge to the power of the medical profession. However much these beliefs are part of a shared culture and society, they are expressions of personal experiences which remain outside the worlds of science and politics.
