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Editorial
Fran Collyer
Department of Sociology & Social Policy, University of Sydney, NSW
Article Text
As this edition goes to press, a rather more important event (in the grand scheme of history) is taking place: the legislative approval of the ownership of private property in China. Given that it is a Friday evening, the building quiet, the editor all but deserted by her comrades; it is not difficult to hear the small sounds of Karl and Frederich struggling within their dark and lonely graves as they too hear the news. Reflecting, with furrowed brow, on this historic moment, I am rather abashed to admit we have no articles in this edition about health care in China. Nevertheless I am comforted a little by the thought that readers may look back to past issues of Health Sociology Review where privatisation in China has been featured prominently.
In this edition there is much to offer the reader about the health care context or service systems of many other countries. Papers have made their way to my Sydney office across the intangibility of cyberspace from places as distant as Canada, Singapore, Trinidad, and France; and as close as Queensland, South Australia, northern New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania. Three major themes have, somewhat serendipitously, emerged in our selection of papers: the challenges and opportunities faced by medicine from an ageing population; the impact on well-being of continuing social stigma; and the analysis of new trends and processes within the organisation of medicine and service delivery.
The papers of Alex Dumas and Bryan Turner; Joanna Sikora and Frank Lewins, address this first theme. Both focus on the ethical implications of new and older technologies which might lengthen or shorten an individual's life. For Dumas and Turner, the capacity to extend human life, perhaps indefinitely, raises concerns about the possibility of similtaneously increasing social inequality. For Sikora and Lewins, community condemnation of some forms of euthanasia indicate a more optimistic future (or at least not a more pessimistic one), in which an individual human life continues to have meaning.
The second theme emerges first in the paper from David Plummer and Pol McCann. In this exploration of the relationship between homophobia and heterosexuality, we are confronted with the darker side of our school playgrounds and schools: the construction of gender through processes of stigmatisation, exclusion, violence and harassment. The theme of stigmatisation and 'deviance' is also addressed in the paper by Peretti-Watel, François Beck, Stephane Legleye, and Jean-Paul Moatti. Here Becker's concept of a 'moral career' is applied to smoking behaviour among adolescents in France.
Our third theme, changes in the organisation of medicine and the delivery of health services, is taken up within three papers. Judy Singer and Kate Fisher analyse the debate about whether the apparent acceptance of non-orthodox medicines within medical clinics is the basis of a new partnership or merely an astute business practice on the part of organised, institutional medicine. Kellie Brandenburg explores the nature of a new medical technology - pre-implantation genetic diagnosis - suggesting ideas for future research. Jane Jones takes on the corporate giants operating in the Australian health care market, demonstrating which of their strategies are financially more prudent for the company's themselves. The significance of this analysis is demonstrated when Jones argues that ownership arrangements for components of the health care market (such as diagnostic laboratories and medical centres), have significant implications for how the Medicare dollar is spent and what proportion of the national health budget will end up as corporate profit.
We trust you will appreciate the range and quality of the papers from this issue. As always I wish to thank our editorial team, publishers, reviewers, authors and The Australian Sociological Association for making the issue possible. A special thank you to my colleague and friend Toni Schofield. Toni and I were invited to co-edit Health Sociology Review in 2003, a challenge we have faced together for the past two years. This year Toni has decided to focus her energies elsewhere, and declined to continue as co-editor. We wish you well Toni, and thank you for all the energy, enthusiasm and imagination you have invested in the Health Sociology Review.
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