Topic 6: Risk and Surveillance
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Module: Health, Illness and Society
Topic 6
Topic 6: Risk and Surveillance
Objectives
When you have completed the reading and participated in the taught components for this week, we hope you will be able to:
- Outline different approaches to thinking about and managing risk and the implications for health, illness and society.
- Critically reflect upon the development of medical screening and the way in which it shapes the perceptions and experiences of health and illness.
Lecture: Risk, surveillance and society
This lecture will examine different approaches to thinking about ‘risk’ and managing uncertainty (e.g. Beck’s idea of a ‘risk society’, Foucault’s notion of ‘governmentality’). It will consider their relevance to health, illness and medicine; the rise in ‘surveillance medicine’, and the way in which people perceive and manage health risks across different cultures and settings.
Virtual seminar: Thinking critically about medical screening
In this seminar you will focus on medical screening, considering how and why screening has developed at different times and in different settings; how the approaches to thinking about risk and uncertainty outlined in the lecture apply to medical screening; and how and why different people advocate or oppose medical screening.
Click below to discuss:
Preparation for this week
Read the set reading , two journal papers drawn from a recent special issue of Sociology of Health & Illness on the sociology of medical screening. Pick an illness or disease that is (or could be) screened for (e.g. breast cancer, Huntington's disease). Focusing on your example, write 200-300 words on what medical screening is, who it might benefit or harm and why. Post your text in the virtual seminar and review/reply to others’ as they appear.
Set Reading
ACADEMIC PAPERS
Armstrong D: Screening: mapping medicine's temporal spaces. Sociology of Health & Illness 2012, 34:177-193. (Read it here)
Armstrong N and Eborall H: The sociology of medical screening: past present and future. Sociology of Health & Illness 2012, 34:161-176. (Read it here)
Lecture Notes and Powerpoints
