Action and Foresight Sociologies – Urgent!
At the BSA’s Medical Sociology Group conference in York this year the ‘Cost of Living’ group (@Cost_ofLiving) organized a symposium to address the coalition government’s attack on the National Health Service (NHS) in England. It was a privilege, if a...
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“Maybe we just need to be a little bit more… sexy?”: What is ‘public health advocacy’ and should health inequalities researchers be doing it?
Health inequalities in the UK are a major challenge, and they are growing. The apparent failure of policy efforts to reduce these inequalities often prompts calls for more public health ‘advocacy’ from researchers in the field. It is argued, first,...
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What’s in a smile? Oral health, consumption and technology
We all know that toothache can often involve unbearable pain for the sufferer. From Shakespeare to Shaw writers have remarked on how the agony of dental pain can lead to total distraction from all else. Robert Burns even wrote an...
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Jacobs, Attenborough and the Queen – our thinking about longevity and work needs some serious attention
A few weeks ago on this blog, Sasha Scambler and Blánaid Daly did a fantastic job of unpicking the “intergenerational blame game”. They briefly, but very convincingly, exposed the various flaws in the right wing argument that social welfare and...
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8 billion by the quarter century (2025)
As inequalities in income and wealth within the USA and the UK increase, it is hardly surprising that those currently at the top would like to avoid having to realize that they are creating an even more unequal world in...
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Market Town : Simon – Living with Epilepsy – Brave New World
Introduction by Lynne Pettinger: It’s not always easy to look at Jim Mortram’s photography, but it’s always worth doing so. In this series, part of his ‘small town inertia’ project, he photographs Simon. Simon’s got epilepsy, and has been put...
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Rethinking class for the 21st century?
As an undergraduate I was introduced to theories and concepts of social class that took off from Marx and Weber. But while I absorbed this ‘classical tradition’ I also became familiar with the Registrar General’s (RG’s) ‘Classification of Occupations’, which...
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The Secret Nuclear War
The period from 1947 to 1991 is often referred to as the “Cold War” – so named because the main protagonists possessed massive nuclear arsenals but never engaged in direct military conflict. Despite the threat of mutually assured destruction the...
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Doctors in Popular Fiction: The Everyday Drama of Medicine #1
Doctors in Popular Fiction occupy an extraordinary position in contemporary television and film and we can all probably list our favourite shows and characters. These stories deliver intense drama with high production values and range from the modern but compassionate...
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Fashion, Male Beauty and the Men’s Dress Reform Party
Changing ideas about medicine and public health were never more in flux than the two decades before the Second World War. One group that sought to steer a new direction in public health was the social hygiene movement – a...
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“Public Health a la carte” – Why social scientists should be interested
The UK Faculty of Public Health defines public health as “the science and art of promoting and protecting health and well-being, preventing ill-health and prolonging life through the organised efforts of society.” The Faculty’s approach is based on the assertion...
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Evidence versus autonomy in TB treatment: a tale of two professions
Today we are used to the idea that medical therapies and interventions are based on some form of evidence about patient outcomes. Indeed the new commissioning processes enshrined in the Health and Social Care Act require NHS commissioners to place...
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