Which Theoretical Perspective Views Medicine As A Form Of Social Control?

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Utilize functionalist, conflict theorist, and interactionist perspectives to wellness issues

Each of the three major theoretical perspectives approaches the topics of health, illness, and medicine differently. You lot may prefer simply ane of the theories that follow, or you may find that combining theories and perspectives provides a fuller movie of how we feel health and wellness.

Functionalism

According to the functionalist perspective, wellness is vital to the stability of the society, and therefore sickness is a sanctioned class of deviance. Talcott Parsons (1951) was the get-go to talk over this in terms of the sick part: patterns of expectations that define advisable beliefs for the sick and for those who have care of them.

According to Parsons, the sick person has a specific part with both rights and responsibilities. To start with, she has not chosen to be sick and should non be treated equally responsible for her status. The sick person too has the right of beingness exempt from normal social roles; she is not required to fulfill the obligation of a well person and tin avoid her normal responsibilities without censure. However, this exemption is temporary and relative to the severity of the disease. The exemption also requires legitimation past a physician; that is, a dr. must certify that the illness is 18-carat.

The responsibility of the sick person is twofold: to try to get well and to seek technically competent assist from a physician. If the sick person stays sick longer than is appropriate (malingers), she may be stigmatized.

Parsons argues that since the sick are unable to fulfill their normal societal roles, their sickness weakens the social club. Therefore, it is sometimes necessary for various forms of social control to bring the behavior of a ill person dorsum in line with normal expectations. In this model of health, doctors serve as gatekeepers, deciding who is healthy and who is sick—a relationship in which the doc has all the ability. Only is information technology appropriate to let doctors then much ability over deciding who is sick? And what about people who are sick, simply are unwilling to leave their positions for any number of reasons (personal/social obligations, financial need, or lack of insurance, for example).

Conflict Perspective

Theorists using the conflict perspective suggest that problems with the healthcare system, as with most other social bug, are rooted in capitalist society. Co-ordinate to conflict theorists, capitalism and the pursuit of profit atomic number 82 to the commodification of health: the changing of something not by and large thought of as a commodity into something that tin be bought and sold in a marketplace. In this view, people with coin and power—the ascendant grouping—are the ones who make decisions about how the healthcare arrangement volition be run. They therefore ensure that they will take healthcare coverage, while simultaneously ensuring that subordinate groups stay subordinate through lack of admission. This creates meaning healthcare—and health—disparities between the ascendant and subordinate groups.

Aslope the health disparities created past class inequalities, there are a number of health disparities created by racism, sexism, ageism, and heterosexism. When health is a article, the poor are more likely to experience disease acquired past poor diet, to alive and work in unhealthy environments, and are less likely to challenge the system. In the The states, a disproportionate number of racial minorities also have less economic power, then they bear a bang-up deal of the burden of poor health. Information technology is not just the poor who suffer from the conflict between dominant and subordinate groups. For many years now, homosexual couples accept been denied spousal benefits, either in the form of health insurance or in terms of medical responsibility. Further calculation to the issue, doctors concur a disproportionate amount of power in the doctor/patient human relationship, which provides them with extensive social and economic benefits.

While conflict theorists are accurate in pointing out sure inequalities in the healthcare organization, they practice not give enough credit to medical advances that would not have been made without an economic structure to support and advantage researchers: a structure dependent on profitability. Additionally, in their criticism of the power differential between doctor and patient, they are perhaps dismissive of the hard-won medical expertise possessed by doctors and not patients, which renders a truly egalitarian relationship more elusive.

Symbolic Interactionism

Co-ordinate to theorists working in this perspective, health and disease are both socially constructed. Equally nosotros discussed in the beginning of the affiliate, interactionists focus on the specific meanings and causes people aspect to illness. The term medicalization of deviance refers to the process that changes "bad" beliefs into "sick" beliefs. A related process is demedicalization, in which "ill" behavior is normalized again. Medicalization and demedicalization touch who responds to the patient, how people respond to the patient, and how people view the personal responsibility of the patient (Conrad and Schneider 1992).

An old engraving depicting

In this engraving from the nineteenth century, "Male monarch Alcohol" is shown with a skeleton on a barrel of alcohol. The words "poverty," "misery," "crime," and "death" hang in the air behind him. (Photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress/Wikimedia Eatables)

An example of medicalization is illustrated by the history of how our society views alcohol and alcoholism. During the nineteenth century, people who drank too much were considered bad, lazy people. They were chosen drunks, and it was not uncommon for them to exist arrested or run out of a town. Drunks were not treated in a sympathetic style because, at that fourth dimension, it was thought that information technology was their own error that they could non stop drinking. During the latter half of the twentieth century, yet, people who drank too much were increasingly defined every bit alcoholics: people with a disease or a genetic predisposition to addiction who were not responsible for their drinking. With alcoholism defined equally a disease and not a personal option, alcoholics came to be viewed with more than pity and agreement. Thus, "badness" was transformed into "sickness."

In that location are numerous examples of demedicalization in history as well. During the Civil War era, slaves who frequently ran away from their owners were diagnosed with a mental disorder called drapetomania. This has since been reinterpreted as a completely appropriate response to being enslaved. A more contempo example is homosexuality, which was labeled a mental disorder or a sexual orientation disturbance past the American Psychological Association until 1973.

While interactionism does acknowledge the subjective nature of diagnosis, it is important to remember who most benefits when a behavior becomes defined as illness. Pharmaceutical companies make billions treating illnesses such every bit fatigue, indisposition, and hyperactivity that may non actually be illnesses in need of handling, but opportunities for companies to make more coin.

Summary

While the functionalist perspective looks at how health and disease fit into a fully functioning society, the conflict perspective is concerned with how health and illness fit into the oppositional forces in society. The interactionist perspective is concerned with how social interactions construct ideas of health and illness.

Short Reply

Which theoretical perspective exercise yous call up best explains the folklore of wellness? Why?
What examples of medicalization and demedicalization can yous call up of?

Glossary

commodification: the changing of something non generally thought of as a article into something that can be bought and sold in a marketplace

demedicalization: the social process that normalizes "sick" behavior

legitimation: the act of a md certifying that an illness is genuine

medicalization of deviance: the process that changes "bad" behavior into "sick" behavior

sick function: the blueprint of expectations that define appropriate beliefs for the sick and for those who take care of them

Farther Research

Should alcoholism and other addictions be medicalized? Read and watch a dissenting view: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/addiction_medicalization

References

Conrad, Peter, and Joseph W. Schneider. 1992. Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness . Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Printing

Parsons, Talcott. 1951. The Social Arrangement. Glencoe, IL: Gratuitous Press.

Scheff, Thomas. 1963. "The Role of the Mentally Ill and the Dynamics of Mental Disorder." Sociometry 26:436–453.