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This introduction to a special section brings together three papers first presented at a panel, 'Medical Professions in South Asia: Historical and Contemporary Analyses', at the 26th European Conference on South Asian Studies, held in Vienna, Austria and online, in July 2021. All three papers deal with aspects of the professionalisation of biomedical doctors in India since its independence in 1947. The authors bring together historical and sociological approaches to illuminate the growth of specialisms, patterns of practitioner–patient interactions and efforts to maintain occupational closure and maintain status in the face of growing challenges. The introduction concludes with a discussion of the relevance of these papers for the sociology of health and illness in India and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to contribute to the limited body of work that has directly explored lay understandings of the causes of health inequalities. Using both quantitative and qualitative methodology, the views of people living in contrasting socio–economic neighbourhoods are compared. The findings support previous research in suggesting that lay theories about causality in relation to health inequalities, like lay concepts of health and illness in general, are multi–factorial. The findings, however, also illustrate how the ways in which questions about health and illness are asked shape people’s responses. In the survey reported on here people had no problem offering explanations for health inequalities and, in response to a question asking specifically about area differences in health experience, people living in disadvantaged areas ‘constructed’ explanations which included, but went beyond, individualistic factors to encompass structural explanations that gave prominence to aspects of ‘place’. In contrast, within thecontext of in–depth interviews, people living in disadvantaged areas were reluctant to accept the existence of health inequalities highlighting the moral dilemmas such questions pose for people living in poor material circumstances. While resisting the notion of health inequalities, however, in in–depth interviews the same people provided vivid accounts of the way in which inequalities in material circumstances have an adverse impact upon health. The paper highlights ways in which different methodologies provide different and not necessarily complementary understandings of lay perspectives on the causes of inequalities in health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that people's views of health and illness are best understood as accounts that they give to others. In that sense, such beliefs are neither the expression of fixed inner attitudes, nor evidence for shared social representations. Instead, we emphasise the importance of seeing health talk as both ideological and dilemmatic. The paper explores the way in which individuals who speak of health (or illness) in general must also give an account of their health in particular. Reviewing the distinction between 'private' and 'public' accounts, the article discusses the various rhetorical devices by which this is achieved. This shows how people's talk about health both defines their social fitness and exemplifies their claims to being ill or healthy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper derives its main hypothesis from results of the Health and Lifestyle Survey as reported in Blaxter's monograph Health and Lifestyles. In this book it is argued that in a favourable social environment a healthy lifestyle matters but in a unfavourable social environment a healthy lifestyle does not make much difference. This hypothesis is tested with data from health surveys from the Netherlands and Denmark. The Dutch data showed a highly significant relationship of unfavourable material and social circumstances with both poor health and an unhealthy lifestyle. In turn, an unhealthy lifestyle was also related to poor health. The Danish study showed similar, although generally weaker, associations. When the British findings would apply to Denmark and the Netherlands, we should find an interaction between material and social circumstances and health related behaviour in their association with health and illness. Neither the Dutch nor the Danish data showed an interaction of the type that the British study assumes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the reasons why the findings from the UK could not be replicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on two reception studies. One focuses on an American medical drama which respondents perceived as entertainment but also as a reliable source of information from which they collected medical and social data by using emotional and ludic strategies. The second compares parallel illness narratives in a soap opera and a documentary. Soap operas were described by informants as good pedagogic tools because they attracted large audiences and promoted identification and repetition which enhance learning. On the other hand, they criticised the documentary for being incomplete and artificial. The conclusion argues that viewers are media-literate, astute and insightful. They produce sophisticated, subtle interpretations which cannot be predicted by content analyses of programmes alone. More reception research is therefore needed, particularly since television is increasingly omnipresent and provides a considerable portion of the public's medical knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of a qualitative study of health in small enterprises, this paper attempts to theorise the social production of illness and injury in the workplace. Particular features of working life in small workplaces, especially their personalised social relations and low polarisation of employer-employee interests, shape workers' perceptions of the employment relationship and of health in relation to work. Strained authority relations at work can form a key social context in which health and injury are constructed. In situations of conflictful supervisory relations, bodily experiences can become 'problematised'. Meanings attributed to health conditions and the quality of the employment relationship are transformed and merged, prompting a questioning of the legitimacy of power asymmetries in the workplace and recognition of the conflicting interests of labour and capital. Bodily experiences and ill-health offer possibilities for resistance and become mediators of broader social tensions. Unheeded illness claims deepen feelings of distrust and blame, further causing labour relations to deteriorate, and re-producing the social conditions for illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Male infertility has been under-researched, and in part this seems due to a strong reticence by men to talk to researchers about infertility. Rather than suggest possible features of male infertility that might lead to this reticence, this paper explores how researchers have themselves accounted for the high nonresponse rates. The analysis details the way in which social scientific reasoning about non-response incorporates both existing knowledge about infertility and everyday reasoning about health and illness. It is suggested that this process is a variant of a pervasive form of commonsense reasoning - the documentary method of interpretation. The interesting upshot of applying this method to non-response, is that an absence of information is 'condemned to be meaningful'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the routine compilation of statistics on the relation between occupation and ill-health it is usually possible to demonstrate links to certain physically demanding occupations. However, studies of the causal links between work and iii-health present problems. Besides the difficulties that often occur in collecting information on present and previous occupations, exposure periods, latency, duration, etc, the analysis and interpretations themselves are complicated. The aim of this paper is to study the interviewees' own views on whether or not any ill-health they may suffer could be caused by any particular job they may hold or have held in the past. Does one get the same picture of the relationship between occupation and ill-health as when routinely compiling statistics? The study population comprised 12,664 men and 12,942 women between 25 and 75 years of age. For all respondents, detailed occupational histories were recorded The results indicated that health problems are more common among persons who have or have had physically demanding work. On the other hand, in certain heavy jobs with high numbers of persons reporting long-term illnesses it is rare for individuals to blame their health problems on working conditions. Conversely, other occupations have relatively low numbers of persons with long-term illnesses, yet high proportions of these attribute their health problems to their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing interest amongst social researchers in enquiry related to lay beliefs about HIV infection and AIDS. Research of this kind is important not only theoretically, in that it may help us to understand more clearly the interface between professional and lay beliefs about health and illness, but also practically, in that it may lead to more effective policy interventions. This paper reports on findings from a series of in-depth interviews carried out with young people participating in local authority and voluntary sector youth provision and in youth training schemes. It identifies lay beliefs about the nature, causes and origins of AIDS amongst young people in lesbian and gay youth groups, and contrasts these with the beliefs of young people in undifferentiated forms of youth provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]