Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides an opportunity to pull together strands in the author's thinking that straddle what are often even now seen and treated as discrete discourses: philosophically grounded theory on the one hand, and substantive research on the other. Sociology can only ever contribute partially to people's understanding, explanations of and interventions in the field of health and health care. Sociologists can never wrap things up. The perspectives considered are structural-functionalism; interactionism; phenomenology and ethnomethodology; social constructionism; post-structuralism and postmodernism; conflict and critical theory; and feminist, post-colonial and disability theory. What follows amounts to a sociological manifesto for a twenty-first century sociology in general, and for a sociology of health inequalities in particular. The role of each of six sociologies is appraised, and the salience of foresight and action sociology is highlighted.