The Sociology of Health and Illness: Critical Perspectives

Now with SAGE Publishing!

The Tenth Edition of The Sociology of Health and Illness: Critical Perspectives addresses the crucial issues in this field with over 45 readings (1/3 of which are new to this edition) from the scholarly literature on health and medicine, thus providing students with the most balanced and comprehensive analysis of health care today. This best-selling anthology from Peter Conrad and Valerie Leiter includes both micro-level and structural perspectives, frameworks for understanding these critical issues, and a breadth of material that allows instructors to mix and match materials to meet their course needs.

New to this Edition

• 17 readings are new to this edition.
• All introductions by the editors have been updated to reflect new readings and the latest data.
• The sections on Financing Medical Care and Health Care Reform have been merged to reflect the current debate about health policy taking place largely within the context of financing.
• The section previously called Comparative Health Policies is now called Global Issues, with an expanded scope that includes health inequalities between countries, the globalization of ADHD, and the international migration of health care workers.
• New material on the dilemmas of medical technology provides both a conceptual framework for understanding the key issues as well as a case study about genetic counseling to help students apply those concepts directly.
• New readings on illness, medicine, and the internet offer increasingly relevant information on how individuals address health and illness in their increasingly technology-dominated lives.
• A new section on globalization helps students understand the impact of factors such as the international pharmaceutical industry, international migration, and the role of the internet.

Peter Conrad is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Brandeis University. His work focuses on the sociology of health and illness, deviance, medicalization, new genetics, and the sociology of ADHD. He has published over 100 articles and a dozen books, including The Medicalization of Society (2007), and most recently, coedited Global Perspectives on ADHD (2018). He received the Lee Founder’s Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems (for lifetime contributions) and the Leo G. Reeder Award for “outstanding contributions to medical Sociology” from the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association.

Valerie Leiter is Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at Simmons College. She received the Irving K. Zola Award for Emerging Scholars in Disability Studies. Much of her work focuses on children and youth with disabilities, including her book, Their Time has Come: Youth with Disabilities on the Cusp of Adulthood (Rutgers University Press). She has two current projects, one focused on individuals′ experiences with autoimmune conditions, and the other on the Food and Drug Administration′s regulation of women′s health medical devices. Her teaching addresses health and illness, disability, children and youth, and sociological methods.