As the technology for self-diagnosis and information about medical and health issues becomes increasingly available to the general public, we have to ask what the consequences of this revolution of information and capability are. In addition, it begs the questions of what the information actually is and what we are actually doing. To see what I mean, read my comment on Jessica Street’s recent “Apps for Autism” entry on the Contexts blog.
Category Archives: General Posts
How Much Biology Should a Sociologist Know?*
This is a question that is becoming more and more important as biological factors are being introduced into traditional sociological models with increasing frequency. From gene-environment interactions predicting violence, social conditions over time affecting genetic structure, to explaining mental illness with genes, sociology is becoming increasingly amiable to biological explanations of social outcomes. Perhaps sociology majors should minor in biology?
This begs a serious question: if biological explanations for social outcomes such as deviance are becoming accepted by both professionals and laypersons with increasing intensity, how relevant is sociology?
*Udry 1995
Uncertainty, Risk, and Health
A key issue in the sociological study of health and illness is UNCERTAINTY. From fears of vaccines, trying to understand cancer clusters, or any other number of protest health social movements, they all hinge on the fundamental dimension of uncertainty and how lay people understand and act on it. This is especially the case for social movements countering accumulated scientific evidence. Ranging from calculated risks and probabilities to personal experience, or from the scientific method and its evidence to experiential knowledge, uncertainty allows the individual cause for trust or cause for alarm.
Privitization of Risk
An important question to ask in the age of the informed health consumer (or ‘bio-citizen’) and the expansion of medical surveillance is how risk is being privatized. Medicalization absolves responsibility for some health outcomes, but it has also relocated and heightened responsibility for managing some risks at the individual level. What are the sociological consequences of this?