Health and Sociology: An Analysis of Functionalism and Conflict Theory

This essay delves into the field of health and sociology, examining two prominent theoretical frameworks: functionalism and conflict theory. The essay begins by tracing the historical development of medical sociology, highlighting the shift towards theoretical concerns. It then explores functionalism's perspective on how social position influences health through mediating factors, including material, psychosocial, and behavioral elements. The essay also discusses the life course perspective in understanding causal connections between exposures and health results. Subsequently, the essay shifts to conflict theory, examining its roots in the works of Max Weber and Karl Marx. It explains how conflict theory views society as a collection of groups competing for resources and power, leading to social change. The essay also analyzes how conflict theory can be used to understand political and social dynamics related to health, including the roles of various stakeholders in healthcare. The essay concludes by acknowledging the limitations of conflict theory in medical sociology, noting that not all health outcomes are directly related to conflict and that the influence of Marxism has waned over time.

Running head: HEALTH AND SOCIOLOGY
1
Health and sociology
Student name:
Institution affiliation:
Lecturer’s name:
Date:

HEALTH AND SOCIOLOGY
2
Introduction
From 1946 to 1951, the new field of therapeutic humanism was a totally connected zone
for investigation. Restorative sociologists operated with specialists and different doctors on
administration subsidized undertakings largely to address restorative issues; few were utilized in
college bureaus of human science in the Joined States and they were for the most part missing
from humanism resources in Europe and in Asia. In any case, a vital occasion happened in 1951
that arranged medicinal humanism toward hypothetical concerns and started the foundation of its
scholastic qualifications. This was the distribution of Talcott long expected manuscript, The
Communal Organization, where they set up the writer at the time the prevailing symbol in
American humanism.
Functionalism and health
From this point of view, social position decides wellbeing through mediator factors.
Longitudinal investigations in which financial status has been measured before medical issues
are available, and in which the frequency of medical issues has been measured amid
development, demonstrate higher danger of creating medical issue in the lower financial
gatherings, and recommend "social causation" as the principle clarification for financial
disparities in wellbeing. This causal impact of financial status on wellbeing is probably going to
be circuitous, through various more particular wellbeing determinants that are diversely
conveyed crosswise over financial gatherings. Financial wellbeing contrasts happen when the

HEALTH AND SOCIOLOGY
3
nature of these go-between factors are unevenly appropriated between the distinctive financial
classes: financial status decides a man's conduct, life conditions, and so on., and these
determinants prompt higher or lower pervasiveness of medical issues.
The primary gatherings of elements that have been recognized as having a vital influence
in the clarification of wellbeing disparities are material, psychosocial, and behavioral and
additionally organic elements are connected to states of financial hardship, and additionally to
wellbeing harming conditions in the physical condition, e.g. lodging, physical working
conditions, and so on. For specialists who accentuate this angle, wellbeing disparities result from
the differential aggregation of exposures and encounters that have their sources in the material
world. Then, material elements and social (dis)advantages typically interlace, with the end goal
that "individuals who have more assets regarding information, cash, power, eminence, and social
associations are better ready to stay away from chance … and to embrace the defensive
techniques that are accessible at a given time and a given place". Psychosocial factors are
featured by the psychosocial hypothesis portrayed previously. Pertinent elements incorporate
stressors (e.g. negative life occasions), distressing living conditions, absence of social help, and
so on.
Specialists underlining this approach contend that financial imbalances in grimness and
mortality can't be completely clarified by understood behavioral or material hazard components
of illness. For instance, in cardiovascular malady results, hazard factors, for example, smoking,
high serum cholesterol and circulatory strain can clarify not as much as half of the financial
inclination in mortality. Marmot, Shipley and Rose have contended that the likeness of the

HEALTH AND SOCIOLOGY
4
hazard inclination for a scope of ailments could demonstrate the operation of components
influencing general helplessness. In the meantime, the converse connection amongst stature and
mortality proposes that components working from early life may impact grown-up death rates.
Behavioral factors, for example, smoking, eat less carbs, liquor utilization and physical exercise,
are absolutely imperative determinants of wellbeing. Besides, since they can be unevenly
circulated between various financial positions, they may seem to have essential weight as
determinants of wellbeing imbalances. However this speculation is dubious in light of the
accessible proof. Examples contrast altogether starting with one nation then onto the next. For
instance, smoking is for the most part more predominant among bring down financial gatherings;
be that as it may, in Southern Europe, smoking rates are higher among higher wage gatherings,
and specifically among ladies.
The commitment of eating routine, liquor utilization and physical exercises to disparities
in wellbeing is less certain and not generally steady. In any case, there is higher pervasiveness of
stoutness and over the top liquor utilization in bring down financial gatherings, especially in
wealthier nations. The wellbeing framework itself constitutes an extra significant middle person
factor, however one which has regularly not gotten sufficient consideration in the writing. We
will talk about this point in detail in ensuing areas of the paper. An existence course viewpoint
expressly perceives the significance of time and timing in understanding causal connections
amongst exposures and results inside an individual life course, crosswise over eras, and in
populace level infections patterns. Embracing an existence course point of view guides
consideration regarding how social determinants of wellbeing work at each level of improvement

HEALTH AND SOCIOLOGY
5
—early youth, youth, youthfulness and adulthood—both to promptly impact wellbeing and to
give the premise to wellbeing or disease sometime down the road. The life course point of view
endeavors to see how such transient procedures over the life course of one associate are
identified with past and resulting accomplices and are showed in illness patterns saw after some
time at the populace level. Time slacks between introduction, malady start and clinical
acknowledgment (idleness period) recommend that exposures right on time in life are engaged
with starting ailment forms before clinical indications; notwithstanding, the acknowledgment of
early-life impacts on incessant sicknesses does not infer deterministic procedures that invalidate
the utility of later-life intercession.
Health and Conflict Theory
This hypothesis, together with its foundations was the work of Max Weber and Karl
Marx , who joined representative and did a lot of communication to try diminish the impact of
auxiliary functionalism, yet it was neglected to date to build up a noteworthy a dependable
balance in therapeutic humanism. The hypothesis depends on the presumption that society is
made of different gatherings battling for advantage. With that disparity, it is an essential
component of communal life, and strife is the real reason for social change. Marx's viewpoint in
strife hypothesis is found in the dismissal of the view communicated by auxiliary functionalism
that culture is held together by shared standards and qualities.

HEALTH AND SOCIOLOGY
6
The hypothesis guarantees that genuine agreement do not exist, relatively culture's
standards and qualities are those of the predominant first class and forced by them on the less
special to keep up their privileged situation. Weber includes, in any case, that communal
disparity is not in view of cash, assets, and connections to the methods for generation, yet in
addition on rank and radical impact. Subsequently every single community framework may
contain some disparity, strife unavoidably results and struggle, thusly, is in charge of social
change (Bertens, Hans. 2015). While the Marxian-situated elements of contention hypothesis
have underscored class battle, different scholars have advanced toward underlining clashes that
happen between intrigue gatherings and the unequal circulation of political power. Present day
social orders are ideal comprehended as having a contention between the standards of majority
rule governmental issues and the association of their economic framework. Thusly, while
individuals have political uniformity, they need social balance. This uncertain contra word usage
is generally changeless and a noteworthy wellspring of contention. The substances of disparities
continually test belief systems of decency, and they impact administrations to endeavor to
determine the circumstance via legislative issues and welfare benefits. Bury, Michael (2016)
The circumstance speaks to one of contention hypothesis' most imperative resources for
medicinal human science; specifically, the ability to clarify the governmental issues related with
wellbeing change. This hypothesis enables us to graph the moves of different substances, similar
to the therapeutic calling, insurance agencies, medicate organizations, the business group, and
general society, as they battle to obtain, secure, or grow their welfares in contradiction to the
existing administration and projects, those under thought. Other clash tactics are associated more

HEALTH AND SOCIOLOGY
7
specifically to establish Marxism by depending on class battle to clarify wellbeing method
results and the burdens of the inferior and employed programs in entrepreneur therapeutic
frameworks where the accentuation is on benefit. While a noteworthy concentration of
contention hypothesis in therapeutic sociology is on the part of contending interests in social
insurance conveyance and arrangement, different welfares and anxiety to wellsprings of disease
and inability to work in such surroundings, common laborers wellbeing, contrasts in wellbeing
ways of life, and entrepreneur ideologies strong of physician and patient connection.
Conclusion
There are natural impediments in the utilization of contention hypothesis in restorative
human science. While some wellbeing circumstances are influenced by struggle related
conditions, others are most certainly not. Individuals may keep up their wellbeing or wind up
plainly debilitated and these results can have pretty much nothing or nothing to do with strife,
governmental issues, intrigue gathering rivalry, class battles, and so forth. Besides, Marxism
started losing impact from the late 1980s forward. As Alex Callinicons brings up, political
occasions sank Marxist hypothesis in the colleges. In the first place, French researchers betrayed
Marxism as a ``philosophy of mastery'' in light of such work camps, the unfriendly conflict, and
the clampdown on unity in Poland in 1991. This took place after comparable responses
someplace around Europe and in Latin America. The procedure that was used to withdraw was a
bit slower in some part of these worlds which use English as their language. Under the effect of
postmodernism and the fall of `existing communism' in Western Europe and this Union, Marx

HEALTH AND SOCIOLOGY
8
was a deceased pooch for most scholarly people there, Abel, Thomas and William C.
Cockerham. (2013)
As a radical precept, Marxist and Leninism likewise neglected to build solid communal
circumstances and a sufficient medicinal services conveyance framework in the previous
Amalgamation and eastern Europe. The area encountered a 20-year rise in grown-up male
impermanence, which is phenomenal for a gathering of developed social orders underneath
steady organizations in reconciliation. This created the center of the recession in their life.
References
Abel, Thomas and William C. Cockerham. 2013. ``Lifestyle or LebensfuÈhrung? Critical
Remarks on the Mistranslation of Weber's `Class, Status, Party'.'' Sociological Quarterly
34: 551±6.
Annandale, Ellen. 2008. The Sociology of Health and Medicine: A Critical Introduction.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Annandale, Ellen and Judith Clark. 2016. ``What is Gender? Feminist Theory and the Sociology
of Human Reproduction.'' Sociology of Health and Illness 18: 17±44.
Archer, Margaret S. 2015. Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

HEALTH AND SOCIOLOGY
9
Archer, Margaret, Roy Bhasker, Andrew Collier, Tony Lawson, and Alan Norrie. 2008. Critical
Realism: Essential Readings. London: Routledge.
Armstrong, David. 2007. ``Bodies of Knowledge: Foucault and the Problem of Human
Anatomy.'' pp. 59±76 in G. Scambler (ed.), Sociological Theory and Medical Sociology.
London: Tavistock.
Beck, Ulrich. 2012. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage. Becker, Howard S.
1973. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, 2nd edition. New York: Free
Press.
Becker, Howard S., Blanche Greer, Everett Hughes, and Anselm Strauss. 2011. Boys in White:
Student Culture in Medical School. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bertens, Hans. 2015. The Idea of the Postmodern. London: Routledge.
Best, Steven and Douglas Kellner. 2011. Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations.New York:
Guilford. Bhaskar, Roy. 2014. Plato Etc.: The Problems of Philosophy and Their
Resolution. London: Verso.
Blane, David. 2007. ``The Value of Labour-Power and Health.'' Pp. 8±36 in G. Scambler(ed.),
Sociological Theory and Medical Sociology. London: Tavistock.
Blumer, Herbert. 2009. Symbolic Interactionism. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2014. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London:
Routledge. ÐÐ. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press.

HEALTH AND SOCIOLOGY
10
Bury, Michael. 2016. ``Social Constructionism and the Development of Medical Sociology.''
Sociology of Health and Illness 8: 137±69.