ROLES OF THE SOCIOLOGIST IN THE INTERPRETION OF DISEASE OCCURRENCE IN SOCIETY

Abstract

Decades ago, Sociology of disease was something of a misnomer. The time has come to embrace the sociological discourse on diseases as focus of medical care. This is because non-involvement of sociologists in interpreting diseases may often lead to undertreatment, overtreatment or mistreatment of diseases which which will be harmful to individuals in society. This paper contains an extensive introduction of the nature of disease emergence from social background/causation. Many studies on disease occurrence are derived from pathological, etiological, applied clinical, epidemiological, neurological, and other congenial fields, yet dearth of information exist on the social interpretation of disease, even within stream of sociology of health and illness. This paper is thus an advocacy for sociological interpretation of diseas situations in society which is critical for fuller understanding of the nature of diseases in this contemporary society. The paper has provided some useful information on how social relations indeed influence the occurrence and the distribution of diseases. It strongly stressed that disease causation is not limited to biological factors which has some limitations. Two main sociological perspectives were employed to further explain the arguments on etiology of disease. Finally, the key roles of the sociologist in disease interpretation in society were outlined.