Essay on the Sociological Impact of Social Class on Health

This essay delves into the sociology of health, specifically examining the ways in which social class contributes to health inequalities. It begins by defining key terms such as social class and health, and then explores the various social factors that impact an individual's health, including access to healthcare, education, and economic status. The main body of the essay focuses on theories explaining the relationship between social class and health, including the perspectives of Bourdieu and Max Weber. Bourdieu's concept of social stratification and class divisions, and Weber's social control theory are discussed in detail. The essay highlights how these theories explain the unequal distribution of health outcomes across different social classes. The conclusion summarizes the key arguments, emphasizing the significant impact of social class on health outcomes and the need for addressing these inequalities. The essay references various academic sources, including books and journal articles, to support its arguments.

Sociology of Health
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Contents
Topic – “Explain the main ways that social class leads to inequalities in health.”.........................3
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
The theories explaining social class which may lead to inequalities in health and class
divisions defined by ‘Bourdieu’, & Social controls ‘Max Weber’........................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7
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Topic – “Explain the main ways that social class leads to inequalities in
health.”
INTRODUCTION
Sociology of health examines the interaction between health and society. Its main objective
is to see the way social life affects mortality and morbidity rate and vice versa. Health can be
stated as the state of mental, social and physical well-being in which the infirmity and disease are
absent. Social class is defined as the divisions in society on the basis of social and economic
status (Adler, Glymour, and Fielding, 2016). It is a group of people in society who possess
similar social economic status. Social stratification is the categorisation of society of its
individuals into groups on the basis of socioeconomic forces such as education, gender, ethnicity,
income, race, wealth, derived power, social status and occupation. There are some social factors
which affect the health of individuals living in society including unequal access to health care
services, poverty, social stigma, lack of education and racism.
The health inequalities are the avoidable and unjust differences in the health of individuals
across the population as well as among specific population groups. High levels of inequality in
the society adversely affects the health of people as it declines social cohesion, a dynamic which
leads to more insecurity, fear and stress for everyone (Ettorre, 2016). This is an essay report
which is based on the topic “Explain the main ways that social class leads to inequalities in
health”. It covers theories explaining social class which may lead to inequalities in health. Apart
from this, it also discusses about class divisions defined by Bourdieu and the social control
theory of Max Weber. At last, a brief conclusion is provided which covers overall summary of
the report.
MAIN BODY
The theories explaining social class which may lead to inequalities in health and class divisions
defined by ‘Bourdieu’, & Social controls ‘Max Weber’
Health inequalities are the differences in health of people or groups. People from diverse
backgrounds, countries and social groups enjoy distinct levels of health. The term social class,
socio economic position and social economic status are at times, utilised interchangeably and
without consideration of distinct meanings they can carry. Social class is referred as the social
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groups arising from economic relationships among individuals which are independent (White,
2016). These relationships are ascertained through forms of labour, ownership and property of
society and their connections by manufacturing distribution as well as consumption of products
and services. Therefore, social class is premised upon structural location of people with the
economy - as employees, employers, unemployed and self-employed, and as owners or not of
land, capital or any other kind of economic investment.
There are various social factors involving employment status, ethnicity, gender, education,
income level etc. which have marked influence on the way healthy a person is. The health
inequalities have significant economic and social cost for the societies as well as individuals. The
social class inequalities in United Kingdom persist at every age. The family life involving
childbearing and household composition strongly influenced by social class (Sunar, 2016).
Education is considered as the key component as high social classes more easily receive higher
education and get prestigious jobs. On the other hand, low social class people are not getting
access to education which brings an inequality between people of upper and lower class. Social
stratification is considered as the main cause which impact on the people of society. The social
control theory of Max Weber describes intrinsic means of social control and argues that the
values, beliefs, commitments and relationships encourage conformity - if the moral codes are
internalized as well as people are tied into wider communities, people will voluntarily limit
deviant acts. This theory seeks to understand the way to reduce deviance (Marx, 1999) .
Social class is utilised to represent number of different social relationships as well as
processes. Wright synthesized many theories into common model which gives clarity on distinct
aspects of social class theory that are useful in describing distinct social phenomena. There are
three main class theories on which Wright focused. These includes individual attributes theory,
opportunity hoarding and social closure and exploitation and domination theory. The individual
attributes approach group individuals by collections of cultural and economic characteristics as
well as their social connections (Harker, Mahar, and Wilkes, 2016). In the Wright's work, it is
the least developed aspect in which it represents open ended category for any force which might
be related to class position. An instance of this is utilisation of social class markers as means of
stratifying the population in order to look at differential outcomes of health without any
consideration of economic and social relationship which exist among classes all the processes
that leads to those differences in outcomes. This theory is most closely aligned with Bourdieu's
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work on capital forms including cultural, social and economic forms and the Savage's elaboration
of measures of these capitals (Bourdieu, 2017).
The another theory determined by Wright is opportunity hording theory which is related to the
theory of Max Weber. The theory suggests that differences in class emerge through social
closure processes some groups are prevented through accessing particular positions. It can occur
by credentialing and education, by ownership of capital, by legal or cultural rules or by social
connections. Any of the barriers act to deny most of the individuals in society access to
favourable positions in occupational structure as well as facilitate access to others also (Lenin,
1899). There are a variety of characteristics which involve in the social differentiation processes
like cultural taste and accent thereby incorporating Bourdieu's work on habitus. The opportunity
hording approach aligned to social classes in a way: the middle class is defined by mechanism
associated with acquisition of skills and education; capitalists are defined through private
property rights production means; and working class is defined through exclusion from capital
and higher education (Sujatha, 2017).
Bourdieusian aspects of opportunity hoarding, specifically those associated to social
differentiation, social capital and cultural capital are defined as key mechanism by which class
differences can outlive and sustain short term changes in occupation or income - preventing fast
changes in social class of people. Wright described third aspect of class theory as processes of
domination and exploitation. It is most closely aligned with Marxism and defines the processes
by which some of the social classes control the activities and lives of other classes as well as the
processes by which capitalists gain economic benefits from labour of others (Marx, 1982).
The exploitation and domination is different from opportunity hording approach as it is the
only approach which defines social relations that control economic activities associated with
working class, involving exclusion from labour market. Wright argues that the three social class
theories and the processes are co-dependent and interlinked. The legal rules and power relations
in Wright's model arising from relative social classes power at any time point in given society is
initiating point for understanding class mechanism or processes in operation. The legal rules and
power relations determines effective control that each group has over the resources of economy
which in turn has different influence on degree to which classes can access good housing, social
networks, education and work (Martin, and et. al., 2015). The social class process influences the
relative power among classes as well as their cumulative exposure for each of the class leads to
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different social and health experiences and results. The model explicitly involves Weberian and
Marxist theories of social class. But, Bourdieu's theory of class is not explicit in the model.
CONCLUSION
As per the above mentioned report, it has been concluded that the social class is frequently
utilised in order to expose the inequalities in outcomes of health. However, the measures are
commonly utilised without an understanding of distinct social processes the different measures
seek to capture. There are many factors which are the causes behind inequalities in health of
social class. These forces involve lack of access to health care services, unemployment, lack of
education, poor housing etc. Inequality in education can be stated as the main cause of inequality
as because of this, people are not getting jobs which creates differences in society as all the
individuals do not have similar access on healthcare, education and other services that are very
much essential for improving health and wellbeing of people. The barriers deny most of the
individuals to access favourable positions in occupational structure and prevent fast changes in
social class of individuals.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Adler, N.E., Glymour, M.M. and Fielding, J., 2016. Addressing social determinants of health and
health inequalities. Jama, 316(16), pp.1641-1642.
Bourdieu, P., 2017. Habitus. In Habitus: A sense of place (pp. 59-66). Routledge.
Ettorre, E., 2016. Culture, bodies and the sociology of health. Routledge.
Harker, R., Mahar, C. and Wilkes, C. eds., 2016. An introduction to the work of Pierre Bourdieu:
The practice of theory. Springer.
Lenin, V.I., 1899. The development of capitalism in Russia. Moscow,^ l, 579, p.27.
Martin, D., and et. al., 2015. Architecture and health care: a place for sociology. Sociology of
health & illness, 37(7), pp.1007-1022.
Marx, K., 1982. Pathways of social development: a brief against suprahistorical theory.
In Introduction to the Sociology of “Developing Societies” (pp. 109-111). Palgrave,
London.
Marx, K., 1999. Capital: An abridged edition. OUP Oxford.
Sujatha, V., 2017. What Is the Sociology behind Health Status and Health-seeking
Behaviour?. Sociological Bulletin, 66(3), pp.286-301.
Sunar, L., 2016. Marx and Weber on oriental societies: in the shadow of western modernity.
Routledge.
White, K., 2016. An introduction to the sociology of health and illness. Sage.
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