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Over the last thirty years, it has regularly been asserted that the incidence of anorexia nervosa is increasing. The paper examines the background of this idea, traces its origins, and analyses the process whereby it became widely accepted within the medical and sociological literature. The study is based upon a citation list of all the epidemiological studies of anorexia nervosa with publication dates between 1960 and the end of 1990, which has been used to identify the most important publications on the prevalence and incidence of the disease. Scrutiny of the content of these key publications has allowed us to follow the emergence, and then the partial break-up, of a broad consensus - involving clinical psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, as well as medical sociologists and historians around the assertion that anorexia nervosa was increasing in incidence. In the course of this historical reconstruction, four distinctive patterns of citation behaviour were revealed. The paper also examines the changing nature of the explanation offered for the putative rise in the numbers of sufferers and suggests reasons why such a perspective upon the disease was widely supported by clinicians and by a variety of other commentators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for the importance of a broad sociological engagement with bioethics. It begins by considering why sociologists should be interested in bioethics and then goes on to explore the cognitive critique of bioethics developed by ethnographers. Some of these authors have also suggested that a more robust bioethics might emerge through the incorporation of the tools of ethnographic analysis. In this paper, it is argued that this is an important claim which needs to be analysed further and that Foucault's concept of discursive formations provides a useful framework for doing so. Once bioethics is redescribed as a discursive formation, the paper explores the challenges and obstacles that sociology and ethnography face in their attempt to open up a space for themselves in bioethics. The paper concludes by suggesting that sociologists and ethnographers need to reflect on the ways in which they might democratically secure legitimacy for their own claims in the field of social ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between class, health and life-styles, and to what extent does health-related knowledge influence subsequent behaviour? These issues have been a source of considerable debate for medical sociologists and others concorned with promoting 'healthier' life-styles over the years, Yet despite a wealth of empirical material, there has been little attempt to theorise this relationship between class, health and lifestyles and the associated issues of structure and agency, accounts and action it raises. This paper attempts to rectify this lacuna through a critical discussion of the work of Pierre Bourdieu, and its relevance to the class, health and life-styles debate. In particular, attention is paid to Bourdieu's analysis of the logic of practice, his concepts of habitus and bodily hexis, and the search for social distinction in the construction of (health-related) life-styles. The paper concludes with a critical commentary on these issues and the relative merits of Bourdieu's analysis for the sociology of health and illness. It is argued that despite certain limitations regarding issues of agency and 'choice', Bourdieu's analysis does indeed shed important light on the health and lifestyles debate, and that further bridge-building exercises of this nature between mainstream theory and the sociology of health and illness are both necessary and fruitful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence based health care has attracted considerable interest from NHS commissioners, public health specialists and sociologists as both a rational approach to decision making and as representing an ideological shift in health care. This paper explores the social construction of 'evidence' in one arena, that of the work of Accident Alliances. Interviews with key participants and observations of meetings suggest a high level of consensus that evidence was important for their work in terms of strategic decision making, operational planning and evaluation. However, evidence was framed differently across the professions and organisations involved in the alliances. Rather than being a neutral tool used to inform decision making, evidence was both constructed through professional practice and contributed to the construction of professional identity. The formal advocacy of evidence based interventions makes explicit a number of potential conflicts in inter-agency working, and Accident Alliances provide an illuminating case study of how these are managed in day-to-day working in health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article author comments on views of social scientists Michael Kelly and David Field on a paper on medical sociology and chronic illness written by him. Analyzing both the sociologists views, it is found that they suggest, self and identity are core aspects of everyday experience which the onset of illness and the change in bodily functioning profoundly affects. It is this interplay play between self and identity, which they argue, provides a "theoretical bridge" to "manage" the relation between biological and social facts. The author points out that the arguments given by Kelly and Field's article are not new, and were already there in various literatures on chronic illness, disability and stigmatization. Much of their arguments seem to be a rehearsal of very familiar arguments, albeit this time with more than a nod in the direction of biology and the physicality of the human body. The author concludes by proposing an extension of Kelly and Field's argument about the body, self and identity.

Mastery of esoteric knowledge is one of the central features assigned by sociologists to fully professionalised service occupations, together with an orientation towards public service. There are, nevertheless, different views about the best way in which this education and socialisation can be provided for new recruits for practitioner roles. Some maintain that the university provides an ideal training ground. Critics of this view, however, call for a rejection of 'university diploma mills' and a return to the type of apprenticeship socialisation common during the premodern era. This paper tests the usefulness of these perspectives in understanding the occupational socialisation of Newfoundland and Labrador midwives. Three major styles of training- traditional apprenticeship, vocational schooling and university education - can be discerned. In comparison to both apprenticeship and academic styles of occupational socialisation, only vocational training nicely blended the art and science of midwifery to produce competent and committed professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an overview of writer Rue Bucher's professional career in sociology. Rue's professional career in sociology began when, as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, she joined the National Opinion Research Center Disaster Team in 1952. This experience provided her with the data to write a thesis and one of her first publications, a paper entitled, Blame and Hostility in Disasters, which was published without revision by the American Journal of Sociology in 1957. In reading the body of Rue's work one cannot miss her fascination with the idea that the process of socialization exhibits the same features whether the person undergoing socialization is being inducted into the role of mental patient, graduate student in biochemistry or psychiatrist. The most clearly elaborated statement that Rue made in this context was that the structure of the organization in which the socialization process takes place is the factor which has the greatest effect on the outcome of the process.

Why should medical sociologists study the media? Accounts of the experience of illness are common in medical sociology. The information these provide has been helpful over the years in re-orienting the vision of health care providers away from a biomedical and reductionist view of patienthood, towards a more holistic understanding of the meanings of illness for those who experience it. To understand the potential relationship between media studies and medical sociology - at least where issues of identity and experience are concerned - one must address the issue of where experience comes from. On the whole, the discipline of psychology has a particular view of this, which many sociologists call an "essentialist" vision of human nature. Media studies, as it is generally taught to students, is often understood to divide into three broad areas of inquiry: production, representation and reception. Studies of production may concern the manner in which media producers behave, or aim to deepen understanding of the commercial environment of media organisations or involve a "political economy" approach to media institutions. The existing structure of this field of study is weighted towards analyses of health representations. Any general account of media and health, if it is to be based on an adequate body of evidence, must therefore take this as the primary object of analysis.

Sociologists studying the topic of workplace injury have neglected professional athletes despite the fact that, for such employees, remaining ‘active’ at work is of paramount importance. This study involved semi-structured interviews with 47 current and former male professional footballers who all had careers in the English professional football leagues. The interviews focused on the players’ experiences of injury and rehabilitation and their relationships with club managers, physiotherapists and doctors. The object of this empirical article concerns an examination of how professional footballers become, or perceive themselves as being, stigmatised when they are injured or in pain. For players, the social conditions of work, for example the internal competition for places, all have implications with respect to their presentation of self when they are claiming to be injured or in pain. The often conflict-ridden relations between players and managers, combined with a culture that normalises pain and injury, means that players often find themselves in health-compromising situations. Thus, examining this highly physical vocation provides an opportunity to add to the literature in which injury at work is socially produced through interpretive social interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an overview of sociological perspectives on new genetics. Although sociological research on genetics is growing, the number of sociologists researching genetics is small compared with those who study problems like HIV/AIDS or stress and mental health. One major focus has been to examine genetic counseling as a profession and the associated dilemmas of counselor-client interaction. Several sociologists have examined the public images and discourse around the new genetics. Related to the public discourse about genetics are analyses that explore lay and professional perspectives on genetics and heredity. While the new genetics is more medical, involves committed individual choice and has not led to overtly discriminatory state policies, the pall of eugenic history is reflected in anxieties about genetics. Sociologists have researched other areas of genetics, including the social construction of genetic knowledge, the emergence and implications of genetic testing, the social control potential of genetic information and the commercialization of genetic bio-technology. Feminist sociologists studying reproductive technology have contributed significantly to understanding of genetics in this context.

The article discusses the contribution of writer Erving Goffman in the field of medical sociology. Medical sociology like almost every other branch of the discipline, has still. to assimilate his study of the microstructure of interaction, the relationship of both individuals and society to that structure, and of the methods he used in the study. There is a discrepancy between his reputation in various sub-disciplines and his overall status as a sociologist. Within fields such as medicine and deviance he has a clear and solid fame. Here even his radical critics have acknowledged the importance of his work. The same can hardly be said for the rest of his output. If his moral stance produces one set of problems, his principal topic creates another. "Asylums" and "Stigma" concentrate on institutions and persons and, though they do this in a novel fashion, the subjects are familiar enough. But the matter on which he has mainly focussed has been, very broadly speaking, that of manners and this is an unusual topic for a sociologist, and one with a slightly decadent feel to it, at least in contemporary society. The notion that "manners maketh man" may have been commonplace in Medieval, Renaissance and even Victorian times, but it seems odd to think so now when "mannered" is a term of abuse.

Sociologists may look at the social world from a variety of perspectives. Depending on their point of view, they will focus on some of the puzzles of social life and ignore others. Different questions will be asked. Alternative means of answering questions will be considered. There have recently been several attempts to classify the theoretical approaches adopted by sociologists. The discrepant sociological views are evident in the substantive sub-discipline of the sociology of medicine. Medical sociologists have begun with contrasting and contradictory, or merely divergent assumptions about the social world and about ways of understanding this world. At times they have described or analysed an aspect of medical sociology from such widely differing points of view as to appear to be discussing a different phenomenon. But, the fact that sociologists of medicine take many approaches is an advantage not a disadvantage. There is some agreement that sociology may be categorized as entailing three distinct perspectives.