The peculiarities of the development of sociology of medicine as the interdisciplinary scientific direction

Abstract

The article examines the main trends in the development of sociology of medicine as a branch of sociology. As it is pointed out by the author, nowadays sociology of medicine is an actual scientific course about social aspects of health and illness, medicine as a social structure. All these items are important under the modern social development. Based on the analysis of the main stages in the history of sociology of medicine, the author notes the contribution of physicians to this process and practical meaning of early studies. The accumulation of empirical knowledge on health led to the theoretical comprehension, that was done by American sociologists, such as T. Parsons, E. Freidson, E. Goffman, H. Becker, R. Merton, and others. The author pays special attention to the study of T. Parsons “The Social System”, in which a structural and functional analysis of medicine as a social institution was presented. After it became obvious that the sociology of medicine can develop not only as an applied field of scientific research, but also a theoretical one. As A.V. Reshetnikov, W. Cockerheim, S. Bloom note, the process of institutionalization of the sociology of medicine ends in the second half of the 20th century in Europe and America, at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries in Russia. The main trends in studies around sociology of medicine are based on such theoretical approaches of sociology as symbolic interactionism, structural functionalism, social constructionism. In conclusion, the author underlines that, the sociology of medicine, like any field of scientific knowledge, reacts dynamically to the ongoing changes in social reality, its structure, social institutions. As a result of this influence, the research field of the sociology of medicine is expanding. Among the topical issues are social inequality in health, the features of the development of digital health, new practices in health, transformation of the value of health in the post-industrial society, pharmaceticisation, biomedicalization, etc.