Sociology of Health and Illness

This is an undergraduate-level course in the sociology of health and illness, an incredibly broad and fragmented field that frequently overlaps with medical anthropology, public health, and other disciplines. The first half of this course focuses on thesocial roots of sickness. The second half concerns thesocial relations of medicine. While well treat these as relatively autonomous topics, well also spend time addressing the mismatches between the forces that make people sick and the organized reactions to sickness. Well also study a number of general structures and processes that simultaneously affect health and care. For example, well study how capitalism, racism, and sexism make people sick. Well then study how these same systems shape, and are shaped by, medicine.