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Introduction
Stephanie D Short
School of Public Health, Griffith University, Meadowbrook, QLD
Article Text
The Annual Review of Health Social Sciences was established in 1991 in order `to increase awareness of the contribution of the social sciences to health research'. It was with this aim in mind that I convened a forum on `Analysing Social Reconstructions of Health Knowledge' at the Annual Conference of the Australian Sociological Association (TASA) at the University of Tasmania in December 1996, to coincide with publication of Volume 6 of ARHSS on this theme. The papers by Fran Collyer, Gillian Hatt and Catherine Garrett, which are reproduced here, reflect on the similarities and differences between their contributions to Volume 6.
Each of the original authors was asked to examine social reconstructions of health knowledge within the changing social relations of health care. The common theme that unites the papers is the proposition that knowledge construction is an embodied social process. The papers point also to the diversity of discourses on any single subject or object of inquiry, and to the fact that the academic medical establishment does not enjoy a monopoly in the construction of new health truths. I turn now to consider the implications of these insights for future health research.
From a theoretical point of view one point emerges clearly: the need to draw on relevant insights, regardless of disciplinary boundaries. While social science research starts with a social science problem, health research by its nature starts with a health problem, such as anorexia nervosa, ulcers or high blood pressure. Although health research questions emerge from debate within the medical literature (Collyer and Hatt), or among people with eating disorders (Garrett), the source of new insights are primarily social scientific.
From a methodological point of view, the main implication is that health researchers should be encouraged to listen to voices that are rarely heard, to value the embodied knowledge of new voices in the research community (Collyer), clinicians (Hatt), and those who have, or who have recovered from, illnesses such as anorexia, ulcers or blood pressure.
From a research policy point of view the main implication is that decision makers should listen to the voices of those outside the current research community in identifying problems and possible therapeutic solutions. Conceptually, too, there is no doubt that each of these papers challenges the mind/body duality fostered in much scientific medical discourse, and indeed points to the nexus between mind, body and society in the construction of illness and health.
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