Sport, health and medicine: a sociological agenda

Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which social scientists should respond to the increasing prominence of health and medicine within sports science research agendas. It first reviews the research which has already been conducted on these themes, identifying core bodies of work on pain and injury, sport and health and the social organization of sports medicine. It then seeks to highlight the comparisons between the sociology of sport and the sociology of medicine, identifying existing areas of overlap and interchange between these two sociological sub-disciplines. Finally it develops a research agenda for the future, consisting of more differentiated and nuanced understandings of sportspeoples' illness/injury experiences, a development of critiques of the sport-health ideology which locate physical activity campaigns within public health more broadly, a scrutiny of the global inequalities which shape athlete health and illness, and an exploration of the impact of elite sports medicine on public health provision.

Keywords::

• health
• pain and injury
• public health
• sociology of medicine
• sports medicine

Notes

^1.http://www.acsm.org/access-public-information/articles/2012/01/09/exercise-is-medicine-a-focus-on-prevention accessed 14th January 2014

^2. It should be noted that three terms are used to describe this area of scholarship: medical sociology; the sociology of medicine; and the sociology of health and illness. Each reflects a slightly different orientation and/or theoretical grounding. Medical sociology is normally seen as a term for the application of sociology to medical matters driven by the research agenda of medicine, whereas sociology of medicine implies a more critical approach to medicine, seeking to examine medicine as a social institution rather than simply working for the advancement of the productivity of medicine. The sociology of health and illness places greater emphasis on the public receivers (patients) of medical care and thus is characterized by more frequent use of theories of the sociology of the body. For reasons of ease, just one term – sociology of medicine – will be used in this article.

^3. See http://www.issa.otago.ac.nz/about.html

^4.http://www2.asanet.org/medicalsociology/ accessed 14th January 2014.

^5. Medicalization refers to medicine's increasing influence and depth of penetration into areas of social life which were previously beyond the scope of the profession's domain. Some have described this as a form of imperialism and pointed to the development of medicine as a tool of social control. Illich (1975) further argued that medicalization meant that the profession not only cured illness and relieved suffering, but also created iatrogenesis, or medically caused illness.