SOCIOLOGY OF HEALTH AND MEDICINE
education is now approaching parity, the overall proportion of school children entering higher education has substantially increased since the 1950s, and the number of entrants from working-class homes has also greatly increased. On the odier hand, class differences in educational achievement remain striking, and the role of educational systems in sustaining a class society is equally apparent. See also BERNSTEIN, HIDDEN CURRICULUM, INTELLIGENCE, MERITOCRACY, CONTEST AND SPONSORED MOBILITY.
sociology of health and medicine the application of sociological approaches to the understanding of the experience, distribution, and treat ment of illness. This subarea of the discipline has been a major growtii area in terms of research and teaching, and in terms of membership it probably represents the largest section of bodi the British and American national sociological associations. The reasons for this expansion are perhaps twofold. The first has been the relatively greater access of workers in this area to research funds: bodi governments and medical sources have been eager to promote research diat could improve health policy and patient care. Secondly, it has become manifest diat the profile of morbidity and mortality in the industrialized world is now dominated by so-called lifestyle diseases (such as stroke, cancer, and heart disease). As the name implies, the management of diese problems often involves an adjustment to ways of living ratiier tfian subjection to a regime of drug dierapy. Medicine has no magic bullets to destroy these diseases (as antibiotics could with many infectious diseases), or immunization programs to give prophylactic protec tion. Moreover, lifestyle diseases show a clear social class gradient, general ly becoming less frequent as class position improves. There is also, tiien, a socially structured pattern of opportunity for healdiy living. Sociology has an obvious input to make in providing a fuller understanding of these chances for life. ' The expansion of health and medicine as an area of sociological concern can be dated from the seminal contribution made by PARSONS' analysis of the SICK ROLE. Parsons' interest, in fact, was part of a much larger tiieoretical project (1951) on the development of a complex functional model of society, but his contribution served to establish the area of medicine as an institution whose sociological study could enhance the dieoretical development of the discipline itself. Herein lies a long-established (if, in the end, overdrawn) distinction between two sociologies of medicine: one, a sociology in medicine, whose research agenda is set by governments, policy makers, and clinicians; the odier, a sociology of medicine, whose questions are determined much more by sociologists and/or sociology. Parsons' concept of the sick role was subjected to criticism and amendment (see, for example, Morgan et al., 1985, for a recent overview of the major contributions here). Other topics of particular importance in the early expansion of the discipline were medical education and socialization (MERTON et al., 1957, BECKER et al., 1961); the social organization of deadi
SOCIOLOGY OF HOUSING
(Glasser and Strauss, 1965,1968); mental illness (GOFFMAN, 1961a, Scheff, 1966); and the analysis of medicine as a profession (Freidson, 1970a, major 1970b). FUNCTIONALISM and SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM were the dieoretical traditions diat informed much of diis early work. As the sociology of health and medicine has grown both in terms of maturity and in the number and dieoretical predilections of its practitioners, research has been extended further. There can now be hardly any substantive area in the field in which work still remains to be initiated. Among the topics diat have been, and continue to be, of interest to contemporary researchers are the relationship between medicine and capitalism; medicine as an instrument of social control (medicine and patriarchy and the medicalization of life have been two prominent diemes here); gender and health, with particular reference to the role of women as paid and unpaid health workers; eating disorders; inequalities in health and health provision, including diose of race and gender as well as class; the social construction of medical knowledge; doctor-patient communication and interaction; patterns of help-seeking and compliance among patients; the holistic healtii movement and complementary therapies; and, most recently, the study of sexual behavior, widi special reference to sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS. sociology of housing a subject area in sociology that studies and seeks explanations for different patterns of housing provision and housing tenure, bodi historically and comparatively, as well as within societies. Its subject matter is related to URBAN SOCIOLOGY and the sociology of welfare. Widiin Britain, for example, housing tenure has changed gready since World War I, when most dwellings were privately owned, rented accommodation. By the 1980s, owner occupation had increased to nearly 60 per cent, widi public housing 30 per cent, and privately rented accommodation making up the remainder. In Britain, the right to a home has not generally been recognized for those without children, widi many young workers, and especially the young unemployed, unable to afford independent accommodation (see HOMELESSNESS).
Housing has never quite achieved the status of a social service within Britain despite substantial council housing (public housing) provision and attempts to control the behavior of private landlords. Sociologists have attributed diis ideological ambiguity to the way in which housing is simultaneously consumption and capital. REX and Moore (1967) have suggested diat differences in housing can be analyzed profitably using the concept of "housing classes," although the generation of such typologies would appear potentially endless. Others have argued diat tenure, the basis of Rex and Moore's housing classes, is not the cause of social status but rather its effect. In a further development, critics of the CHICAGO SCHOOL have argued diat cities and areas or
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SOCIOLOGY OF ART
Aristotle or, closer to modern times, Scottish Enlightenment thinkers such
(GIDDENS, 1981). However, though this draws attention to an undoubted central emphasis widiin modern sociology, seen not least in the
TRIAL SOCIETIES
SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION
tices. It is characteristic of industrial societies diat, compared widi previous
Aldiough the emergence of the sociology of education as a distinct field
sociology of art an area of sociological analysis that includes within its Until the 1950s, the sociology of education remained strongly influenced In the United States, mainstream sociologists such as Coser (1978) and (1982) have focused on organizational and institutional analysis of the agencies involved in artistic and cultural production and tiieir relations widi audiences. Whereas at one time Marxist approaches sought to analyze artistic prod-
BECKER
HERMENEUTICS).
Structuralist approaches, including SEMIOTIC analysis, exploring the complex codes involved in artistic products, have also been
During the 1960s, a breakdown of the functionalist hegemony in sociology and an increasing pessimism about reformist policies in education, especially in the United States, led to the emergence of a sociology of edu-
sociology of education was to direct attention to features of schooling such as
