Sociologies of Interaction by Alex Dennis

Author:Alex Dennis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley

Going to see the doctor

Interactionist sociologists have studied the processes involved in making the decision to go to see the doctor. It might be thought to be a simple matter of rationality: the person experiences a troubling symptom that does not go away and so seeks aid. However, studies show that people from all social groups often experience symptoms worth clinical investigation that they do not take up with a doctor. Also, delay in seeking medical advice is very common whether the symptom is perceived as serious or slight (Zola 1973). The normal state of affairs is for persons only to seek medical consultation when there is a ‘break in the accommodation to symptoms’ occasioned by an interpersonal crisis (a divorce or bereavement, for example) or by perceived interference with interpersonal relations, with work or physical activities, or by direct sanctioning by family and friends.

There are variations, typically along class, gender, age and ethnic lines, in what it takes to prompt the person to go to the doctor. For example, women tend to have higher levels of medical consultations than men (in one popular saying, ‘women get sicker but men die quicker’). This has prompted interactionist-oriented sociologists to inquire into the sources of these differences in order to understand better how illness is socially constructed. Eliot Freidson (1970) examined the lay constructions of illness – that is, the non-technical beliefs and perceptions of people about being sick. Freidson examined the ‘lay referral structures’ people use – the social networks of persons that can be turned to routinely for advice about worrisome symptoms. Typically these ‘consultants’, as Freidson calls them, are the family members and relatives, the friends and co-workers, with whom an individual can discuss their current symptoms and worries. These networks may be loose and truncated, for example among White middle-class professionals, or they may be cohesive and extended, for example in established working-class communities. Since White middle-class professionals have few consultants in their lay referral network, and because their cultural values are broadly consonant with those of medical professionals, they will more quickly seek formal medical attention than members of working-class communities, who have a richer range of consultants to provide guidance about the significance of their symptoms and some cultural values dissonant with those of professional medicine.

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