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Indigenous Health and the Contribution of Sociology: A review
Komla Tsey
North Queensland Health Equalities Promotion Unit, School of Population Health, University of Queensland, QLD
Ernest Hunter
North Queensland Health Equalities Health Promotion Unit, School of Population Health, University of Queensland, Cairns, QLD
Abstract
...few researchers seem to have reflected explicitly on the strengths and weaknesses of social science practised as episteme, techne, and phronesis, respectively. Even fewer are carrying out actual research on the basis of such reflection, and fewer still have set out the methodological considerations and guidelines for a phronesis-based social science (Bent Flyvbjerg 2001: 129).
Of the four papers constituting the symposium on Indigenous health and the contribution of sociology (Health Sociology Review Volume 10(2): 5-64), two specifically consider contemporary health issues related to alcohol use and two present historical overviews of health related issues. All of these authors may be considered social scientists (although one is also a medical graduate and the only Indigenous member of the group), and while all directly or indirectly address the place and role of social science in understanding and informing policy and intervention in Indigenous health (and affairs more generally) only two (d'Abbs and Anderson) provide explicit direction for future work.
The authors of each paper approach their topic from a different methodological perspective; but collectively the papers raise, although do not examine, fundamental questions - not only regarding the approaches and methodologies by which social science can better inform policy and interventions that result in improvements in Indigenous health, but also raising broader issues concerning the relevance of social science itself to the needs and challenges of contemporary society.
Admittedly, the symposium set out to demonstrate the 'contribution' that social science can make to Indigenous health and not specifically to examine, for example, the types of approaches to social science that are more likely to benefit Indigenous health.
References
Flyvbjerg B (2001) Making social science matter: why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
NHMRC (1998) Some advisory notes on ethical matters in Aboriginal research, Canberra: National Health and Medical Research Council, Medical Research Ethics Committee.
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