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STRATIFICATION, CLASS AND HEALTH: CLASS RELATIONS AND HEALTH INEQUALITIES IN HIGH MODERNITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2001

GRAHAM SCAMBLER  and
PAUL HIGGS
GRAHAM SCAMBLER
Affiliation:
Unit of Medical Sociology Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, Royal Free and University College Medical School, University College London, London W1N 8AA, England
PAUL HIGGS
Affiliation:
Unit of Medical Sociology Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, Royal Free and University College Medical School, University College London, London W1N 8AA, England
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Abstract

This paper starts from a critique of the dominant and largely empiricist paradigm within which sociologists have approached the relationship between social class and health. Referring to the transformational model of social activity and the relational model of society advanced by Bhaskar, the nature and reality of class relations and the preconditions for their theorisation are discussed. A neo-Marxist theory of class relations owing much to Clement and Myles is outlined. The relevance of this theory for a revised and more sociological consideration of health inequalities is then explored and some pointers offered for future empirical enquiry. The authors contend that this theory may throw some light too on the theoretical and political timidity medical sociologists characteristically show in their current research on health inequalities.

Keywords

class as a ‘real’ phenomenonhealth inequalitiesoperationalisations ofclasstheories of class relationsrevised agendas for studying health inequalities
Type
Research Article
Information
Sociology , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , May 1999 , pp. 275 - 296
Copyright
1999 BSA Publications Ltd

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