The New Political Sociology of Science (Science and Technology in Society) by Scott Frickel Kelly Moore

Author:Scott Frickel, Kelly Moore [Scott Frickel, Kelly Moore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-29921-333-6
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: 2006-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

While this chapter focuses on EHMs, it is important to understand the broader context from which these particular struggles have emerged. Health social movements, especially embodied health movements, affect our society in three main ways. First, they produce changes in the health care and public health systems, both in terms of health care delivery, social policy, and regulation. Second, they produce changes in medical science, through the promotion of innovative hypotheses, new methodological approaches to research, and changes in funding priorities. Activists have fought against hospital closings, against curtailment of medical services to the poor, and against restrictions by insurers and managed care organizations (Waitzkin 2001). Self-care and alternative care activists have broadened health professionals’ awareness of the capacity of laypeople to deal actively with their health problems (Goldstein i999). Disability rights activists have garnered major advances in public policy, including enhanced accessibility to public facilities and protection against job discrimination (Shapiro i993). Toxic waste activists have brought national attention to the adverse health effects of chemical, radiation, and other hazards, helping to shape the development of the Super-fund Program and related right-to-know laws (Szasz 1994). Environmental justice activists, who are centrally concerned with environmental health, have publicized the links between physical health and the socioeconomic and political environment and have shown that health improvement and disease prevention require attention to, and reform of, a variety of social sectors, such as housing, transportation, land use planning, and economic development (Bullard i994; Shepard et al. 2002). Occupational health and safety movements have brought medical and governmental attention to a wide range of ergonomic, radiation, chemical, and stress hazards in many workplaces, leading to extensive regulation and the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (Rosner and Markowitz i987). Physicians have organized doctor-led organizations to press for health care for the underserved, to seek a national health plan, and to oppose the nuclear arms race (McCally 2002).

Third, health social movements produce changes in civil society by pushing to democratize those institutions that shape medical research and policymaking. Specifically, health social movements have advanced progressive approaches to promoting public health and disease prevention, helped expand and improve health services, and fostered democratic participation in social governance. For example, women’s health activists have greatly altered medical conceptions and treatment of women, expanded reproductive rights, expanded funding and services in many areas, altered treatment protocols for diseases disparately impacting women (e.g. breast cancer), and pushed to enhance community oversight in how medical research is conducted (Ruzek 1978; Ruzek, Olesen, and Clarke 1997; Morgen 2002). Similarly, AIDS activists have obtained expanded funding for treatment research, fought for medical recognition of alternative treatment approaches, and obtained major shifts in how clinical trials are conducted (Epstein 1996). Mental patients’ rights activists radically altered mental health care delivery by ensuring the protection of patients’ civil rights that used to be inferior to those of prisoners. These rights have been expanded to include the right of patients to demand better treatment and the right to refuse treatments (Brown 1984).

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