SOCI-1015EL Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Talcott Parsons, Sick Role, Medical Sociology
16 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
SOCI1015!
March 13, 2018!
Health and Medicine !
•Health care created in Saskatchewan by Tommy Douglas (CCF party)!
•What does politics have to do with health?!
•In Vancouver, they’re pushing to decriminalize all street drugs !
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•The Social Side of Medicine!
•Medical sociology: based on the view that medical practices and beliefs are intensely
social !
•Draw on political sociology!
•Seeks to generate sociologic data to develop heath care policies !
•Seeks to improve delivery of health care through sociologically informed research!
•Draws on critical sociology !
•Critical examination of the practices of pharmaceutical companies, medical schools,
and health care providers !
•Healing is achieved through social factors !
•Race, gender, ethnicity, age, class can all greatly affect and individuals’s experience of
medical professions !
•The Sick Role!
•Talcott Parsons introduced the concept of the sick tole in his book The Social System!
•Being sick is a social that comes with a set of expectations !
•Regulates what a sick person can expect from society!
•Regulates what society should expect of the sick person!
•Structural functionalism presumes social uniformity of experiences !
•Four expectations of the sick/patient role:!
•Should be exempted from normal social responsibilities !
•Should be taken care of instead of having to take care of themselves!
•Are socially obligated to try and get well!
•Are socially obligated to seek technically competent help !
•E.L. Koos critiqued Parson’s view of the sick role!
•The sick role is not the same for everybody !
•He noted that the higher one’s class, the easier it was for them to play that role !
•In addition to variations of class, there are variations in relation to gender, race and
ethnic backgrounds!
•ex) society has different expectations of mothers!
