From the Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, and the Palliative Care Service, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital — both in Boston (N.A.C.); the Department of Sociology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. (N.A.C.); and the Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (P.D.A.). Address reprint requests to Dr. Christakis at the Depar...

1 Department of Sociology and Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington 2 Department of Sociology, University of Washington 3 Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, University of Washington 4 School of Public Health, Harvard University 5 Department of Statistics, Department of Biobehavioral Nursing and Health Systems, Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences,...

The paper explores the contributions of Roger Bastide (1898-1974) to the field of insanity and mental illness, revisiting his work in social psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychology and, sociology of mental disorder. It highlights the interdisciplinary nature that marks Bastide's works, that also include religion, art, literature. The paper presents biographical data and highlights the importance...

This article examines the emergence and consolidation of bioethics as a discipline from a sociological perspective. This reconstruction helps us to understand on the one hand what is meant by bioethics and what its practices and areas of inquiry are, and on the other to identify various concepts and expert opinions about what the field of study for bioethics should be, opinions which lead in pr...

This essay considers the dual roles occupied by the sociologist of mental health. These roles involve the articulation of social causation in the study of mental health outside of the discipline, coupled with the articulation within the discipline of the importance of mental health in the study of sociology. I consider these roles both through examples and speculation, emphasizing the unique co...

Given the complexity surrounding various interactions among health determinants and the challenge of being able to adequately describe the dynamic processes through which health determinants have their effects, the purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual overview demonstrating the effects of socioeconomic status and cumulative disadvantage on producing health disparities across the lif...

Given the broad and eclectic nature of the sociology of health and medicine, any account needs to attend to the substantive research topics as well as the theoretical frameworks that have underpinned or justified the approach to research. As noted in the Prologue, theoretical frameworks derived from sociology (an inherently fragmented discipline [Johnson et al., 1984]) predominate in the sociol...

The planning grant at the School of Library and Informational Science (SLIS) at the University of Missouri has two aims: (a) developing a model curriculum for health sciences librarianship at the master's level and (b) developing materials that can be delivered by alternative instructional methods. To accomplish the first aim, the faculty will investigate the possibility of offering courses in ...

The renewed interest in 'public sociology' has sparked debate and discussion about forms of sociological work and their relationship to the State and civil society. Medical sociologists are accustomed to engaging with a range of publics and audiences inside and outside universities and are in a position to make an informed contribution to this debate. This paper describes how some of the debate...