Skip to main content

Social Perspectives on Health

Overview

  • Credit value: 15 credits at Level 5
  • Convenor: to be confirmed
  • Assessment: a 500-word essay outline (30%) and 1500-word essay (70%)

Module description

In this module we introduce you to key social perspectives on health, health and illness, and experiences of health/illness. You will be prepared for work in national health systems, for example in strategic planning, policy design and implementation, at national, regional and district level, and also in international organisations, NGOs and academic institutions.

The module describes key health systems frameworks and issues on national and international agendas and will equip you with the language and concepts to engage in policy development and service improvement, so that you are able to address major contemporary health challenges.

Indicative syllabus

  • An introduction to diverse sociological and anthropological ways of thinking in relation to health and illness
  • Appraisal of how knowledge in relation to health is produced, including how evidence and ideas are made, represented and used in public health responses
  • The social production of health and ill health, including critiques of biomedicine and appreciating how social and cultural processes shape experiences as well as health responses
  • Anthropological conceptualisations of biomedicine, public and global health, including those around illness and disease, risk, structural violence, biopower, colonial legacies, health citizenship and scepticism of biomedical expertise
  • A critical analysis of inequalities and variations in health outcomes, examining the relationships between social and material factors (e.g. social class, ethnicity, gender, disability) and differential health experiences across populations
  • Understanding key concepts, such as medicalisation, stigma and risk, including in relation to ideas of mental health

Learning objectives

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

  • understand a range of concepts, theories, principles and definitions used in medical anthropology and in sociology, as they are applied to the study of health and illness
  • apply anthropological and sociological frameworks, concepts and principles in the analysis of particular public and global health issues, drawing on relevant evidence
  • evaluate the contributions and limitations of anthropological inquiry and analysis in public and global health arenas
  • critically analyse the main conceptual, theoretical and methodological issues raised by research in the sociology of health.