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Contribution of a sociological approach to the concept of stress: A reference to occupational stress
Chris Peterson
National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University
Abstract
Levi (1984:1) suggests that stress 'refers to a process in the body, to the body's general plan for adapting to all the influences, changes, demands and strains to which it might be exposed', both physical, mental and social. Based on Levi's suggestion of a process of adapting to outside influences, stress is a state of discomfort or ill-ease, an unpleasant state within the individual created by the individual's inability to satisfy needs and desires compared to demands made and resources available in the environment.
Work on stress derives from a wide range of disciplines including psychology, sociology, biology and medicine. Frankenhaeuser (1981:213) says that 'research on human stress... is the meeting place for several disciplines'. Stress research has mainly been laboratory based within the disciplines of biophysiology and psychophysiology. This research was important as it established vital links in physiological processes which helped to identify stress as a real physiological process and not as psychosomatic. The concept of stress has broadened in more recent years to include psychological explanations of physiological processes. Sociological approaches conceptualised stress as a social process which includes cultural, social and political components.
The aim of this paper is to examine some of the relationships between purely biophysiological, psychological and sociological approaches to understanding stress. I will draw specifically on the causes of stress at work in order to show that the sociological perspective offers a very important and necessary approach to understanding occupational stress. This paper intends to show that the stress response occurs as part of the interaction of an individual with social-structural, political and cultural forces: individual capability and the resources to shield from the stresses of life are largely a result of this interaction.
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