Key features of major theoretical perspectives

1. Structural Functionalism
   Key theorists: Talcott Patson, Emile Durkheim, Robert Merton, Jeffrey Alexander.
   Key concepts: value consensus, functional prereequisites, sick role.
   Focus of analysis: Structuralist focus: shows how various parts of society function to maintain social order.
   Health example: The 'sick role' (social expectations of how doctors and patients should behave) exposes the management of illness as a social experience.
   
2. Marxism
   Key theorists: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vincente Navarro, et al.
   Key concepts: class conflict, capitalism, medical-industrial complex, commodification of heal care
   Focus of analysis: Structuralist focus: shows how the unequal distribution of scarce resources in a capitalist society is based on class division and highlights 'who benefits' and who is disadvantaged.
   Health example: Analyses the links between class and health status, and between class, medical power, and profit-maximalisation.
   
3. Weberianism
   Key theorists: Max Weber, George Ritzer, et al
   Key concepts: beueaucracy, ideal type, rationalisation, McDonaldisation
   Focus of analysis: Combines a primary focus on agency, with structuralist tendencies: shows how the increasing regulation of social life takes place and may stifle human creativity; also explains the multiple forms of social inequality and social conflict.
   Health example: Examines how health professionals are increasingly subject to regulation and managerial control, producing greater efficiency and uniformity in health care delivery, but potentially decreasing the effectiveness of patient care.
   
4. Symbolic interactionalism
   Key theorists: George H. Mead, Erving Goffman, Howard S. Becker, et al.
   Key concepts: the self, lbaelling theory, stigma total institutions, negotiated order.
   Focus of analysis: Agency focused: emphasises how individual and small-group interaction construct social meaning in everyday settings to construct and change social patterns of behaviour.
   Health example: Uncovers how and why certain forms of behavious are treated as deviance, exposing the stigma, negative consequences, and biased treament of social groups whose behaviour is deemed 'obnormal' (eg homosexuality).
   
5. Feminism
   Key theorists: Germaine Greer, Ann Oakely, Naomi Wolf, et al women.
   Key concepts: patriarchy, gender, sexual division of labour.
   Focus of analysis: Consists of a range of strands that are either structuralist or agency focused; seeks to explain and address the unequal position of women in society.
   Health example: Exposes sexism, biological determinism, and gener inequality in health research, theory and treatment.
   
6. Post-structuralism/Post-modernism
   Key theorists: Michael Focault, David Armstrong, Nicholas Fox, Rosemary Pringle, Elizabeth Grosz.
   Key concepts: Discourse, panopticon, bio-power, power-knowledge, surveillance.
   Focus of analysis: Agency focused: critques theories based on universal truths and structuralist assumptions; concentrates on subjectivity, diversity, and fragmentation.
   Health example: Examines how certain discourses of normality and panoptic effects serve to discipline and control various social groups.

Hope you enjoy it all:

perhaps consider asbestos access to treatment, the beaconsfield mine incident, HIV drug testing on men not women, and many other fun things.

happy studying, i'll be back home at 11 for any questions.

tim