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Editorial
Toni Schofield
Behavioural & Community Health Sciences, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia
Fran Collyer
Department of Sociology & Social Policy, University of Sydney, NSW
Article Text
This issue of Health Sociology Review bears a number of significant changes, not least of which is a new pair of editors! Fran Collyer and I have been in the 'hot-seat' since February this year. With lots to learn, the experience has been more like weathering an inundation of relentless surges than ascending some proverbial 'steep curve'. Nevertheless, we have survived and Health Sociology Review issue 13/2 (December 2004) has found its way into print! We look forward to the challenge of producing two standard issues and a special edition every year during our editorship and, of course, to working with the authors and reviewers that make the publication possible.
Speaking of which...our circle of authors and reviewers is steadily expanding and diversifying - a sign of the growing internationalisation of Health Sociology Review. While the journal will maintain a strong Australasian focus, it will also carry articles offering analysis and commentary on issues of global relevance. This issue illustrates the new direction. British sociologist, Iain Wilkinson, is the author of our lead article on 'social suffering' and the challenge it poses for social science. As Wilkinson points out, 'social suffering' has been brought into being as an object of social scientific enquiry mainly through anthropological and sociological studies of 'health'. This has broadened the meaning of the concept of 'health' within sociology and opened up new ways of understanding social forces and possibilities for innovation and change. In the process, Wilkinson suggests, sociologists have begun a renewed engagement with questions of meaning and morality and of the social dynamics associated with creating radical alternatives to the ways we live now.
Evan Willis and Alex Broom's paper underscores just how emergent this trend is in relation to prevailing conceptual approaches and subject matter in Australian health sociology. Based on a review they conducted of all the major databases for health social sciences from 1991 to the present, they identify a number of key theoretical approaches underlying health sociology research. Foucault's work, and the notion of 'risk' and its relationship to late modernity and globalisation, have been especially significant. Marxist and political economy approaches have declined markedly. The main subjects of research, meanwhile, have included the body, the AIDS pandemic, the social relations of various medical technologies, complementary and alternative health care, and the political and ideological basis of health care delivery. These developments have gone hand-in-hand with a major methodological trend, the growth of discourse analysis, especially in relation to media representations of medical activities. Meanwhile, quantitative research has declined markedly. As Willis and Broom comment on methodological directions as a whole, Australasian health sociology has become increasingly qualitative in approach. On a practical note, the substantial bibliography that Willis and Broom provide to support their analysis is likely to be immensely useful for the very many of us who struggle with keeping up-to-date with the range of health sociology topics we teach and supervise!
In the face of the overwhelmingly qualitative character of much Australasian health sociology, the article by Rosa Alati, Jake Najman and Gail Williams reports on the results of a large, quantitative study of the mental health of Filipino-born women five and fourteen years after they had given birth in Australia. In a strong tradition of quantitative sociological research in mental health, the paper examines the relationship between social network size and symptoms of poor mental health among a sizable cohort - in this case, Filipino- and Australian-born women who became mothers in Australia. The paper's unique and interesting contribution is the analysis it provides of the specific role that birthplace and period-of-residence play in the experience of Australian women who become mothers. As Alati and her colleagues suggest, being Australian-born affords greater protection against poor mental health in the earlier years of motherhood compared with the mental health of Filipino-born women undergoing the same experience. This, they propose, is associated with Filipino-born women's poorer social networks that are related to their short period of residence. The mental health differential between these Australian mothers, however, disappears with increasing time. Why is this so? You must read the article!
This edition of Health Sociology Review also features a symposium on rural health and health care issues. Guest-edited by Brian Cheers and Jane Edwards from the University of South Australia, the symposium is a fascinating corrective to the 'metro-centricity' of most Australasian health sociology. The four papers that comprise the symposium demonstrate a lively diversity in the field, in terms of both conceptual frameworks and subject matter.
The contents of this current issue, we need to point out, also bear the imprint of our editorial predecessors, Jane Shoebridge and Eileen Willis. They were responsible for organising the rural health symposium and for liaising with various authors and reviewers of some of this issue's articles when they were initially submitted. As regular readers of, and contributors to, Health Sociology Review will know, Jane and Eileen were an indefatigable duo who simply refused to let a good thing die! Based at Flinders University in South Australia, they nurtured the Review with painstaking dedication until eContent took it over in 2003, now publishing it as an international journal. So, on behalf of the Australasian health sociology community, a big 'thank you' to you both, Jane and Eileen.
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