Sociology of Health and Illness

The course is designed to introduce students to the social scientific and cross-cultural study of health and illness (including the conceptual differences among illness, sickness, and disease): health and illness are universal features of human experience. We will also critically analyze the structural determinants of who falls sick, explore the meanings of “medicine,” “bodies, ” and “technologies,” and investigate the roles that cultural beliefs and social institutions play in shaping sickness in different societies around the world. Students will receive credit for either ANT 3137 or SOC 3137. These courses may substitute for each other in the F grade replacement policy.