Health and the Social Rights of Citizenship: Integrating Welfare-State Theory and Medical Sociology

Social scientists have long been interested in the link between societal processes and individual outcomes. The founders of sociology were interested in how social integration affected suicide rates (Durkheim 1951 [1897]), how the social organization of labor relations impacted worker experience (Marx and Engels 1964 [1848]), how religious principles translated into individuals’ work ethics (Weber 1930), how modern society impacted mental health (Simmel 1950), how mental health institutions shaped individual inmates (Goffman 1961) or how the social system impacted health care utilization (Parsons 1951). All addressed issues of health, illness, and healing in one way or another, yet medical sociologists have tended to pay less attention to the distal forces of societal-level institutions, focusing instead on the more proximate micro- and meso-level determinants of individual health.