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A decade of health sociology in review
Evan Willis
School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University, VIC
Alex Broom
School of Social Science, University of Queensland, QLD
Abstract
This paper reports on a review of health sociology in Australia from 1990 till present. The authors searched all the major databases for health social sciences including Medline, CINAHL, Sociological Abstracts and Australian Medical Index. Methodological difficulties in capturing all such work are outlined first. Examination of the citations revealed a significant increase in research and commentary in the discipline, and a continued (since the last review) movement away from the biomedical world views towards more inductive, qualitative research strategies and epistemological standpoints. This decade saw the emergence of AIDS, the body and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as popular themes in research, and the proliferation of risk as a conceptual tool.
An important finding is the proportion of single-authored publications and the possible implications for communication and dialogue amongst those working in the discipline, and the seeming lack of collaboration, at least at the level of publication. It is concluded that although there are parallels with the findings of the previous reviews, there have been distinct methodological and paradigmatic shifts in health sociology over the last decade.
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