Sociology of Health: an introduction   Over the last decade the promotion of health has become a central feature of health policy at local, national and international levels, forming part of global health initiatives such as those endorsed by the World Health Organization. At the same time a concern with ‘healthy living’ has become a preoccupation for many people.  The Sociology of Health Promotion  responds by offering the first critical sociological account of these developments and locates them within a set of wider socio ‐ cultural changes associated with late modernism.  The Sociology of Health  offers analyses of contemporary public health policy, lifestyle, consumption, risk and health. It also examines socio ‐ political critiques of health promotion and reflects upon their implications for policy and practice, the impact of both morbidity on social life and social life on morbidity. Diseases and conditions once attributed mainly to genetic predisp...

  1. The social basis of health, illness and medicine   1.1 Bio ‐ chemical model versus Holistic approach   Health and illness are, surely, simply biological descriptions of the state of our bodies. When we’re ill, we’re ill. A more refined version of this common ‐ sense view underlies the long ‐ standing biomedical model of disease, which is based on the following assumptions:   ·                Disease is an organic condition: non ‐ organic factors associated with the human mind are considered unimportant or are ignored altogether in the search for biological causes of pathological symptoms.   ·                Disease is a temporary organic state that can be eradicated – cured – by medical intervention. Disease is experienced by a sick individual, who then becomes the object of treatment.   ·     ...