Health, Illness, and Medicine in Canada

In 15 chapters and approximately 500 pages, Clarke has presented a well-written and student friendly overview of the main issues surrounding the sociology of health and illness and the sociology of medicine in our country. The first section opens with a discussion of the basic sociological perspectives, and ways of thinking about health, illness, and medicine. Chapter one addresses all of the major sociological approaches: structural functionalism, symbolic interactionism, feminist theory, and conflict theory. Part Two addresses critical issues in the sociology of health and illness: disease and death in Canada; environmental and occupational health and illness; social inequity, disease, and death (including age and gender factors as well as class, race, and ethnicity factors); the experience of being ill including an inside view of how illness is experienced and a unique case study on women and cancer. The third part is devoted to the sociology of medicine. This is very significant; it allows the book to branch out of sociology courses and into nursing courses. Eight out of the books total 16 chapters are in this section. This section is particularly strong. Chapters here investigate the social construction of scientific and medical knowledge and medical practice; medicalization: the medical-moral mix; medical practitioners, medicare, and the state; the medical profession; a critical assessment of the medical care system in Canada; nurses and midwives in a changing health-care system; complementary and alternative medicine; and the medical-industrial complex.