Sociology 219 - MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY

Spring
2014
01
4.00
Eeva Sointu
TTh 03:00-04:20
Smith College
40565-S14
SEELYE 110
esointu@smith.edu
This course seeks to outline and analyze ? and at times challenge ? the ways we understand health, illness and medicine. We discuss definitions and representations of health and illness, the significance and impact of biomedical dominance, alternatives to biomedical practices, and the intersections of health, illness and medicine with gender, race and social class. We locate ideas of health historically but also situate models of health care in the context of broader social, political and cultural trends and possibilities. The course encourages you to ask questions about the power exercised by various medical practitioners, and about the ways in which understandings of health, illness and medicine are neither natural nor neutral, but invested with culturally and historically specific meanings. Enrollment limited to 35. Prerequisite: SOC 101.
Permission is required for interchange registration during the add/drop period only.