Seven warrants for qualitative health sociology.

The biomedical and public health sciences have established a clear warrant for their existence. A warrant is a broadly shared justification for a research-based discipline (Katz, 1997). From the post World War II WHO proclamation aiming for “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being” to a recent reconceptualization of health as “the ability to adapt and self-manage” (Huber et al., 2011), thewarrant for the health sciences is to provide the knowledge base for the collective achievement of individual optimization. In spite of a diversity of interpretations about health priorities, the applied health disciplines have rallied around this mandate with research to prevent mortality and cure morbidity, and to alleviate the human, social, and economic costs of health or a lack of health. Articulated in grant proposals, enshrined in the notion of evidence-based medicine, and repeated in research institute’s vision statements, the broad purpose suggests a common interest beyond narrow disciplinary borders. The warrant to improve population and individual health offers a ready answer to the critic’s question of why we should bother with health research. Given that biomedical and public health research is united by the goal of optimizing the ability to adapt and self-manage, does health sociology need a separate warrant? Robert Straus (1957) famously distinguished two communities: researchers studying sociology in medicine and sociology of medicine. Sociologists in medicine would answer the question of the need for a separate warrant negatively. These social scientists have hitched their wagon to the broader health mandate: aiming to provide knowledge that directly benefits health and, more often, health care. They