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134 THE ISA HANDBOOK IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY

gender equity (Khoury and Weisman, sociology – needs to be more overtly present
2002: 61). Effectively, gender sensitive in research in medical and health sociology if
health policies attempt to turn (or return) the field is going to maintain a vibrant theo-
gender-as-conflict (between men and women) retical profile. Similarly the social categories
into gender-as-consensus (i.e., something of gender, class, age, and race should not
that, in varying ways, matters for everyone). only be used as social background variables
While the consensus approach has its merits, in mapping health, but also as structures
it also harbours the risk of turning gender and embodied social categories which have
into a characteristic of individuals. Gender is bearings on health experiences and health
at heart a relational concept that connotes behaviours (Krieger and Davey Smith, 2004;
structural relations of inequality, which does Shim, 2002). A gender-informed approach
not simply imply difference, but also hierar- guarantees a rich area of research on gender
chies of power (Busfield, 1996; Lorber, and health that has a potential for providing
2001). new insights and theoretical contributions to
both international and national sociological
knowledge in medical and health sociology.
Critique of the lack of theory generation in
CONCLUDING REMARKS medical sociology has been expressed in the
past. Horobin (1985) characterized medical
The themes of conflict and competition char- sociology in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s as
acterized much of the theoretical critique ‘small-scale, here-and-now ethnography’
of the consensual perspectives forming the because a large part of the body of medical
mainstream of medical sociology in the sociology was project-based, a circumstance
1970s. These themes have been replaced by that he argued impeded the cumulative theoret-
the theme of cooperation in the twenty-first ical development of the field. Although more
century’s debate on health. The theme of academically based, medical sociology in the
cooperation/social cohesion – the Illichian US tended to lose touch with the basic theoret-
pastoral and the Durkheimian characteriza- ical issues of the early founding theories some-
tion of lost village life – was present in ear- where in the 1980s (Mechanic, 1993).
lier decades, but social-capital theory has Along with the neo-liberal health policies
revitalized the theme of social factors related characterizing most Western societies, med-
to health, factors that hark back to the (seem- ical sociologists have lost their previous
ingly) less complicated days of social and major promoter and funding agency – the
human relations as the promoter of human government. Health care and its delivery is
health. A similar backward look at the less and less a matter of direct concern to
archaic body and primordial society as the government, as marketized models of socie-
basis of health is present in recent neurobio- tal organization are increasingly presented as
logical stress theories on the impact of cur- the only possible strategy for success in a
rent urban and work environments on health. globalized economy. Governments do not
An appeal to consensus is also evident in need to design health systems: the market
recent gender sensitive policies in health care will sort out what is efficient and effective,
which focus attention on the individual man whether or not it is also equitable or humane.
or woman. These kinds of perspectives on If governments have no stake in this, and if
health (re)introduce reductionist thinking in the correctness of their assumptions about
explaining health and thereby make the the market is taken a priori, then there is no
social patterning of health invisible. reason to use tax funds to investigate the
The emphasis on social structures as influ- design of delivery systems. Similarly, if class
encing health and on medicine as a social inequalities in health – or, as it appears we
institution – the founding themes of medical must now call them, ‘health variations’ or