ABSTRACT

The sociology of medicine has come a long way from its origins in epidemiology and clinical practice. Like all specialist areas of study it has developed its own internal debates, its preferred core of research topics, and its own professional infrastructure for their analysis. Arber does suggest that the concentration on structural/materialist explanations has deflected researchers from seeing the ways in which women's familial and employment roles need to be analyzed within a structural context. She concludes that, as with men, structural factors have a major impact on women's health status, but that also women's health status influences women's roles. A parallel case of health promotion which is largely invisible to the formal medical world is the use of traditional treatments by West Indian women. The sociology of health is centrally about the ways in which people strive to maintain their health. This is different model from one that starts with ill health, or that contained within the medical model.