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This paper draws on the experience of two Romani and three non‐Romani scholars in knowledge production on the health and social inequalities experienced by European Roma populations. Together, we explore how we might better account for, and work against, the complex web of dynamic oppressions embedded within processes of academic knowledge production. Our aim is to encourage careful scrutiny through which sociologists of health and illness might better recognise our own complicity with oppression and identify concrete actions towards transforming our research practices. Drawing on a well‐known domains of racism typology (Annual Review of Public Health, 40, 2019, 105), we use examples from our own work to illustrate three interconnected domains of oppression in which we have found ourselves entangled (structural, cultural and interpersonal). A new conceptual framework is proposed as an aid to understanding the spectrum of different "types" of complicity (voluntary–involuntary, conscious–unconscious) that one might reproduce across all three domains. We conclude by exploring how sociologists of health and illness might promote a more actively anti‐racist research agenda, identifying and challenging subtle, hidden and embedded negative ideologies and practices as well as more obviously oppressive ones. We hope these reflections will help revitalise important conversations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper investigates the association between the Great Recession and educational inequalities in self‐rated general health in 25 European countries. We investigate four different indicators related to economic recession: GDP; unemployment; austerity and a ‘crisis’ indicator signifying severe simultaneous drops in GDP and welfare generosity. We also assess the extent to which health inequality changes can be attributed to changes in the economic conditions and social capital in the European populations. The paper uses data from the European Social Survey (2002–2014). The analyses include both cross‐sectional and lagged associations using multilevel linear regression models with country fixed effects. This approach allows us to identify health inequality changes net of all time‐invariant differences between countries. GDP drops and increasing unemployment were associated with decreasing health inequalities. Austerity, however, was related to increasing health inequalities, an association that grew stronger with time. The strongest increase in health inequality was found for the more robust ‘crisis’ indicator. Changes in trust, social relationships and in the experience of economic hardship of the populations accounted for much of the increase in health inequality. The paper concludes that social policy has an important role in the development of health inequalities, particularly during times of economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on Bourdieu's theory of economic, social and cultural capital to understand the relative effect of the volume and the composition of these capitals on healthcare service use in later life. Based on data from the fifth wave of the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (n = 64,840), we first look at the contribution of each capital in the use of three healthcare services (general practitioner, dentist and hospital). Using cluster analysis, we then mobilise Bourdieu's concept of habitus to explain how the unequal distribution of material and non‐material capitals acquired in childhood lead to different levels of health and hospital care utilisation in later life. After controlling for demographic and health insurance variables, our results show that economic capital has the strongest individual association among the three capitals. However, the results of a cluster analysis used to distinguish between capital structures show that those with high non‐material capital and low material capital have higher levels of primary healthcare utilisation, and in turn lower levels of hospital use. Bourdieu's approach sheds light on the importance of capitals in all forms and structures to understand the class‐related mechanisms that contribute to different levels of healthcare use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the medical management of sleeplessness as 'insomnia', through the eyes of general practitioners (GPs) and sleep experts in Britain. Three key themes were evident in the data. These related to (i) institutional issues around advocacy and training in sleep medicine (ii) conceptual issues in the diagnosis of insomnia (iii) and how these played out in terms of treatment issues. As a result, the bulk of medical management occurred at the primary rather than secondary care level. These issues are then reflected on in terms of the light they shed on relations between the medicalisation and the pharmaceuticalisation of sleeplessness as insomnia. Sleeplessness, we suggest, is only partially and problematically medicalised as insomnia to date at the conceptual, institutional and interactional levels owing to the foregoing factors. Much of this moreover, on closer inspection, is arguably better captured through recourse to pharmaceuticalisation, including countervailing moves and downward regulatory pressures which suggest a possible degree of depharmaceuticalisation in future, at least as far prescription hypnotics are concerned. Pharmaceuticalisation therefore, we conclude, has distinct analytical value in directing our attention, in this particular case, to important dynamics occurring within if not beyond the medicalisation of sleeplessness as insomnia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Irene Wennemo's paper "Infant mortality, public policy and inequality: a comparison of 18 industrialised countries 1950-85" takes an important step further in the understanding of the relationship between social policy and infant mortality in developed countries. The German figures for 1981 can therefore be seen as a potential refutation of the effect of income distribution on national mortality rates which turned into a confirmation. In countries where data are lacking, one might almost suggest that life expectancy should be used as a proxy for income distribution, or infant mortality for relative poverty. But that would come unstuck among pre1989 Eastern European countries. Their mortality rates were relatively high despite comparatively small differences in income. The link between income distribution and national mortality rates which Wennemo and the author have shown has important implications for the understanding of the relationship between health inequalities and national mortality rates. It implies that health inequalities are not simply variations in health round an independently established national average, but that the amount of health inequality in each society represents a net burden on overall national standards of health.