The Sociology of Health and Healing

"...It is well-written and well-referenced...this is an important, innovative, enjoyable textbook which can be highly recommended for use in undergraduate and postgraduate sociology courses on health related subjects, and which will be of value in courses on women's studies and gender. It will also be of interest to inquiring health care practitioners of whatever persuasion." - Sociology "This book takes a bold step in pointing new directions for sociological and social-historical studies of health and health care." - Social History of Medicine Throughout the book, the division of labour in health care, especially as it relates to social class and gender divisions, is taken as central. Its particular characteristic, and one that distinguishes it from other texts in this field, is that feminist critiques of health care are considered alongside the mainstream writing in the social history of medicine, and in medical sociology. Part I takes an historical approach to the types of healing knowledge, the modes of treatment, and the organization of health care found in Europe over the last four hundred years. Part II is a sociological analysis of contemporary health care covering concepts of health and illness, the organization of the National Health Service, the division of labour, the impact of international capitalism, and the issues at stake in arguments about human reproduction.

Professor Margaret Stacey

List of figures; Preface; Acknowledgements Introduction: Some theoretical and methodological thoughts Part I Health and Healing in Other Societies The Plurality of Healing Systems in Tudor and Stuart England Eighteenth-Century Foundations for the Development of Biomedicine Hospitals and Public Health: Control, Exploitation and the Development of Medical Knowledge Organizing the Division of Labour in Health Care Laying the Basis for the National Health Service The State and the Division of Health Labour: the National Health Service Part II Introduction and Biological Base Concepts of Health and the Nature of Healing Knowledge (1): Lay Concepts of Health and Illness Concepts of Health and the Nature of Healing Knowledge (2): Alternative Healing Systems Concepts of Healing and the Nature of Healing Knowledge (3): Biomedicine and Beyond Social Organization of Health Care and the Division of Paid Health Labour Unpaid Workers in the Division of Health Labour (1): the Patients Unpaid Workers in the Division of Health Labour (2): the Unpaid Carers Health Care and Late Twentieth-Century Capitalism Reproduction for the Twenty-First Century References and Bibliography Index