Graham Scambler
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 228392 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Graham Scambler |
| NOMBRES | Graham |
| APELLIDO | Scambler |
| FIRMA | SCAMBLER G |
| AFILIACIONES | University College London |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 85 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 882 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 81 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 4 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1980 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 15 |
Whither sociological theory in the health field
The application of sociological theory to the study of health and health care has a long if chequered career, and there is considerable international variation in the manner of its development and in current practice. In this paper our focus is on the current situation in the UK, although its analysis and arguments clearly have a somewhat broader applicability. We draw loosely on Bourdieu’s notion of a ‘field’ to discuss post-WW2 developments in …
Disability stigma resistance by parents at the intersection of psychosocial and structural levels
In this paper we define and argue for the salience of the concept of 'project stigma' in the context of long-term illness and disability. In the opening section we briefly review the literature on long-term illness and disability as 'personal tragedy' and go on to discuss critiques of this limited and limiting narrative from disability theorists and, belatedly, medical sociologists. This prepares the ground for conceptual innovation around the no…
Bridge building, medical sociology and beyond
In this wide-ranging interview Graham Scambler provides an overview of his long academic career. He discusses how he became a medical sociologist, his early work on epilepsy and stigma, his part in the development of sociology textbooks for medical students, the diversity of his work and his many collaborations, his ‘theoretical turn’, his longstanding interest in critical realism and his attitude to ‘bridge building’ between philosophy and empir…
Critical realism and ‘downward causality’
Only too often critical realist contributions to understanding and explaining social phenomena fall into one of two discrete categories: exercises in philosophy or social theory, or empirical research that strikes as more or less atheoretical. This paper continues a long-term project to build bridges between abstruse issues of philosophy and theory and attempts to grasp the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of actual social events. The topic selected is elite prof…
Combining experiential knowledge with scholarship in charting the decline of the National Health Service in England
The sustained governmental assault on the National Health Service (NHS) in England during post-1970s financialised or rentier capitalism has received considerable attention by the research community. There is some evidence, however, that many of those members of the public who have not had occasion to use the NHS remain largely ill-informed about the extent of, and reasons for, its present troubles. In this paper I offer an auto/biographic accoun…
Sociological Theory and Medical Sociology
Let’s Campaign for a Fairer Society in the Aftermath of Covid-19
In this paper I ground a brief account of the impact of COVID-19 on the United Kingdom in an understanding of a decade of austerity politics from 2010 to 2020, itself a product of the advent and consolidation of post-1970s financialised or rentier capitalism. I argue that such an analysis is essential if realistic plans are to be laid for a "better"-understood here as a more equitable or "fairer"-society. I go on to consider the contributions tha…
The fractured society
This brief paper builds on my recently published work on financial capitalism. My objective here is (a) to sketch an account of the primary social features of post-1970s financialised capitalism, (b) to identify select dynamics or mechanisms that have resulted in these features, (c) to outline a programme of research to enhance our explanatory understanding of the ‘fractured society’ via the sociological concepts of structure, culture and agency,…
Communal Forms
Drawing on a wide range of social theory, as well as empirical inputs from studies of work, neighbourhoods, events, meeting places and online self-help groups, this book suggests that communal forms are constructed on the basis of communicative, material, biographic-cultural, practice-based, and situational layers. The concept of community has long provided an important point of departure for the discipline of sociology, with the conflicting conc…
Covid-19 as a 'breaching experiment
In this brief paper, I argue that the coronavirus pandemic is functioning like an ethnomethodological 'breaching experiment'. In short, it is putting a gigantic spanner in the works of neoliberal governance, in the process exposing the widening cracks and fissures of what I have called the 'fractured society'. I begin by recalling Garfinkel's notion of the breaching experiment and by listing the principal attributes of the fractured society. I th…
Sociology, Social Class, Health Inequalities, and the Avoidance of “Classism
OPINION article Front. Sociol., 05 July 2019Sec. Medical Sociology Volume 4 - 2019 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2019.00056
Marx, financial capitalism and the fractured society
This article begins by considering the relevance and limitations of Marx's writings for understanding post-1970s financial capitalism. Two specific propositions are outlined and developed. The first is that twenty-first-century financial capitalism is conspicuously vulnerable to implosion or collapse, notably via a Habermasian 'legitimation crisis'. The second traces its progressive 'fracturing', with references to neoliberal austerity and post-w…
Peasant Sex Workers in Metropolitan China and the Pivotal Concept of Money
This article is a theoretically informed empirical investigation of breadwinning peasant workers in China’s urban metropolis of Guangdong and the values they ascribe to money acquired through sex work. The existing literature about money sits at the very core of modernity, individualisation and mobility providing endless opportunities to explore its variegated meanings in China’s global commercial sex industry. We situate the women’s desires and …
Sociology, Health and the Fractured Society
It is now accepted that many of the determinants of health and health care are social. This volume offers a philosophical and theoretical frame within which the nature and extent of this might be optimally examined. The analysis is rooted in Roy Bhaskar’s basic and dialectical critical realism, although it draws also on the critical theory of Jurgen Habermas. It purports to provide an ontologically and epistemologically grounded comparative socio…
Heaping blame on shame
The focus of this article is the 'weaponising' of stigma in the neoliberal era. The article starts with a brief characterisation of the sociological literature on stigma before moving to characterise post-1970s financial capitalism, focusing on relations of class and command. It then examines (a) the distinctions between enacted and felt stigma (involving norms of shame) and enacted and felt deviance (involving norms of blame), and (b) the novel …
The symbolic affordances of a video-mediated gaze in emergency psychiatry
Understanding mental health
I readily agreed to review David Pilgrim’s discussion of mental health. I was familiar with Pilgrim’s copious writings on mental health and his willingness and capability to cross disciplinary boun
Structure, Culture and Agency
Professor Margaret Archer is a leading critical realist and major contemporary social theorist. This edited collection seeks to celebrate the scope and accomplishments of her work, distilling her theoretical and empirical contributions into four sections which capture the essence and trajectory of her research over almost four decades. Long fascinated with the problem of structure and agency, Archer’s work has constituted a decade-long engagement…
Nurses as Antibiotic Brokers
We are likely moving rapidly toward a post-antibiotic era, as a result of escalating antimicrobial resistance, rapidly declining antibiotic production and profligate overuse. Hitherto research has almost exclusively focused on doctors' prescribing, with nurses' roles in antibiotic use remaining virtually invisible. Drawing on interviews with 30 nurses, we focus on nurses as brokers of doctors' antibiotic decisions, nursing capacity to challenge d…
Structure, Culture and Agency
Professor Margaret Archer is a leading critical realist and major contemporary social theorist. This edited collection seeks to celebrate the scope and accomplishments of her work, distilling her theoretical and empirical contributions into four sections which capture the essence and trajectory of her research over almost four decades. Long fascinated with the problem of structure and agency, Archer’s work has constituted a decade-long engagement…
The Sociology of Health, Illness and Medicine
As we write in the twenty-first century, the sociology of health and medicine sits as a distinct and growing speciality field of research and university teaching, found on all continents and within many countries, including the United States, eastern and western Europe, Australia, Britain, Japan, China, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico
Theorizing health inequalities
Illness Experience
The phrase “illness experience” refers to the ways in which people define and adjust to perceived interruptions in their health. It is conventional in medical sociology to distinguish between illness and disease. “Illness” refers to people's lay or subjective definitions of health problems, while “disease” refers to professional or objective definitions of health problems, which are based on signs and symptoms. The value of this distinction is th…
The path of least resistance? Jurisdictions, responsibility and professional asymmetries in pharmacists' accounts of antibiotic decisions in hospitals
Sociology as Applied to Medicine
Part 1: Social Aspects of disease. Society and changing patterns of disease. Social determinants of health and disease. Part 2: Social factors in Medical Practice. Health and illness behaviour. The doctor-patient relationship. Hospitals and patient care. Living with chronic illness. Dying, death and bereavement. Part 3: Social structure and Health. Inequality and social class. Women and health. The health and health care of ethnic minority groups…
Health-related stigma
The concept of stigma, denoting relations of shame, has a long ancestry and has from the earliest times been associated with deviations from the 'normal', including, in various times and places, deviations from normative prescriptions of acceptable states of being for self and others. This paper dwells on modern social formations and offers conceptual and theoretical pointers towards a more convincing contemporary sociology of health-related stig…
Being epileptic
Most commentators on the stigma associated with epilepsy have assumed that the psycho-social distress sufferers experience derives wholly or largely from the discriminatory attitudes and behaviour of normal people. This 'orthodox viewpoint' is assessed and found to be lacking in empirical support. A study of the impact of epilepsy upon the lives of sufferers is reported, special attention being paid to coping strategies developed in the family an…
Health work, female sex workers and HIV/Aids
Re-framing Stigma
Communicative and strategic action in interpreted consultations in primary health care
Sociological Theory and Medical Sociology
Stratification, Class and Health
This paper starts from a critique of the dominant and largely empiricist paradigm within which sociologists have approached the relationship between social class and health. Referring to the transformational model of social activity and the relational model of society advanced by Bhaskar, the nature and reality of class relations and the preconditions for their theorisation are discussed. A neo-Marxist theory of class relations owing much to Clem…
Heaping blame on shame
The focus of this article is the 'weaponising' of stigma in the neoliberal era. The article starts with a brief characterisation of the sociological literature on stigma before moving to characterise post-1970s financial capitalism, focusing on relations of class and command. It then examines (a) the distinctions between enacted and felt stigma (involving norms of shame) and enacted and felt deviance (involving norms of blame), and (b) the novel …
Health inequalities
The evidence bearing on the nature and extent of health inequalities documented globally and in the UK is addressed, twin foci within the UK being (a) associations between socioeconomic classification and health and longevity, and (b) the notion of a 'social gradient'. A consideration of the various 'models' that have been developed by sociologists and their allies - most conspicuously social epidemiologists - to account for (a) and (b) is offere…
Sex Work Stigma
The social institution of prostitution or sex work has a long and varied history in the West, during almost all of which women plying their trade within it have been stigmatized. After a brief excursus on contemporary sex work and the concept of stigma itself, this article applies the author's jigsaw model to throw light on the causal role of social structures in shaping sex work stigma, in relation to women migrants from Eastern Europe and the f…
Perceptions of evidence-based medicine
Acupuncture and other types of 'complementary and alternative medicine' (CAM) are proving increasingly popular in the UK. As attempts to incorporate acupuncture into allopathic medicine have grown in number, the issue of assessing its effectiveness in ways consistent with the concept of evidence-based medicine has become more urgent. The nature, relevance and applicability of such assessments remain controversial however. This paper reports a qua…
Resistance in Unjust Times
Few sociologists dissent from the notion that the mid- to late 1970s witnessed a shift in capitalism's modus operandi. Its association with a rapid increase of social and material inequality is beyond dispute. This article opens with a brief summation of contemporary British trends in economic inequalities, and finds an echo of these trends in health inequalities. It is suggested that the sociology of health inequalities in Britain lacks an analy…
Social Structure and the Production, Reproduction and Durability of Health Inequalities
Generating a model of epileptic stigma
Covid-19 as a 'breaching experiment
In this brief paper, I argue that the coronavirus pandemic is functioning like an ethnomethodological 'breaching experiment'. In short, it is putting a gigantic spanner in the works of neoliberal governance, in the process exposing the widening cracks and fissures of what I have called the 'fractured society'. I begin by recalling Garfinkel's notion of the breaching experiment and by listing the principal attributes of the fractured society. I th…
The relationship between medicine and the public
Concordance is based on the idea that patients and practitioners should work together towards an agreement on treatment choice. This requires a redefinition of the relations and encounters between doctors and their patients. This redefinition emphasizes the need for patient involvement and participation. In this article we examine concordance against the background of wider social change, structural as well as interpersonal. We focus in particula…
From fatness to badness
Obesity (or being overweight) is now considered a by-product of membership of developed societies. Moreover, it is considered a growing 'global' health problem. This article reports on a small qualitative study of adults who fell into one or other of these categories in Norway in 2010, and who have been faced with decisions about lifestyle versus surgical remedies. This decision making is contextualized and the principal criteria examined. Embodi…
Theorizing health inequalities
Capitalists, workers and health
The dog that didn't bark
The symbolic affordances of a video-mediated gaze in emergency psychiatry
The path of least resistance? Jurisdictions, responsibility and professional asymmetries in pharmacists' accounts of antibiotic decisions in hospitals
Negotiating mothering against the odds
Women prostitutes in the Aids era
The prevalence and nature of female prostitution in the west is considered, as are the main types of motivation for engaging in sex work. The variable tendency to define western prostitutes as causal agents in the transmission and spread of HIV/AIDS is noted, and the medical/epidemiological evidence against doing so briefly summarised. The impact of the AIDS pandemic on prostitutes and their work is discussed, as are a number of legal, ideologica…
Menstrual symptoms, attitudes and consulting behaviour
Social class, epileptic activity, and disadvantage at work
A community sample of 94 adults with epilepsy were interviewed in their homes by a sociologist and a neurologist. Less than half of those who had worked full-time after the onset of their seizures could recall that their careers had been inhibited by their epilepsy, yet most felt 'at risk' and chose to conceal their condition from their employers or potential employers. Disadvantage in employment was found to be related both to a working class st…
Menstrual symptoms, attitudes and consulting behaviour
Minor Psychiatric Morbidity and Menstruation
The extent of minor psychiatric morbidity in a community sample of women aged 16-44 was investigated, using the 30-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). The relationship between psychiatric ill health and the reporting of menstrual distress, measured by a modified version of the Moos Menstrual Distress Questionnaire (MMDQ), was then examined for three phases of the menstrual cycle--the premenstruum, the menstrual flow and the remainder of the …
Being epileptic
Most commentators on the stigma associated with epilepsy have assumed that the psycho-social distress sufferers experience derives wholly or largely from the discriminatory attitudes and behaviour of normal people. This 'orthodox viewpoint' is assessed and found to be lacking in empirical support. A study of the impact of epilepsy upon the lives of sufferers is reported, special attention being paid to coping strategies developed in the family an…
Attitudes Towards Epilepsy in General Practice
Little is known about the attitudes of general practitioners (GPs) towards epilepsy or of the attitudes they attribute to laypersons. Postal questionnaires returned by 50 GPs permitted an analysis of the main sources of their knowledge of epilepsy, the role of GPs in treating patients with epilepsy, the personalities and behaviour of peo ple with epilepsy, and the psychological and social consequences of having epilepsy. The results were compared…
Sociological Theory and Medical Sociology
Classical Theory Comes to Medical Sociology
Generating a model of epileptic stigma
Women prostitutes in the Aids era
The prevalence and nature of female prostitution in the west is considered, as are the main types of motivation for engaging in sex work. The variable tendency to define western prostitutes as causal agents in the transmission and spread of HIV/AIDS is noted, and the medical/epidemiological evidence against doing so briefly summarised. The impact of the AIDS pandemic on prostitutes and their work is discussed, as are a number of legal, ideologica…
Movements for change
Health promotion, the sex industry and the challenge of change
(1994). Health promotion, the sex industry and the challenge of change. Critical Public Health: Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 30-35
Social change and health promotion among women sex workers in London
The evidence of unmet health needs among women sex workers in London is briefly reviewed as are the problems associated with health promotion and service initiatives in this area. It it argued that the principal obstacle facing both women sex workers and those tiying to deliver health promotion programmes is sex workers' social marginalizauion. Health promotion, interpreted as covering health education, prevention and health protection, it condde…
The 'Project of Modernity' and the Parameters for a Critical Sociology
This paper is premised on the view that it is premature to write about the end of modernity. Moreover it is argued that, for all the flaws of early Enlightenment philosophy, what Jurgen Habermas has termed the 'project of modernity' should be seen as incomplete, rather than abandoned. Drawing more generally on Habermas' theories, five metatheoretical theses are outlined and elaborated. These, it is suggested, might set the parameters for a fin-de…
Stigma and disease
Theorizing modernity
From old to new public health
This paper reviews the three primary phases of the ‘old’ public health in Britain, and considers its displacement by the so-called ‘new’ public health since the 1970s. It identifies and explores the core aspects of the role of the new public health physician–as ‘health strategist’, ‘health promoter’, ‘health expert’, ‘health adviser’ and' ‘health bureaucrat’ –and the tensions and contradictions associated with them. It concludes by discussing the…
On the Periphery of the Sex Industry
Unarmed combat-notably boxing and wrestling-has played an important role in premodern and modern societies, mostly in the form of play, sport, or preparation for war. It has almost always been a male preserve. We focus on a small empirical study of women who wrestle in Britain and the United States in the essentially private arena of combat clubs, magazines, and videos-'on the periphery of the sex industry.' Drawing on interviews with women and o…
Stratification, Class and Health
This paper starts from a critique of the dominant and largely empiricist paradigm within which sociologists have approached the relationship between social class and health. Referring to the transformational model of social activity and the relational model of society advanced by Bhaskar, the nature and reality of class relations and the preconditions for their theorisation are discussed. A neo-Marxist theory of class relations owing much to Clem…
The dog that didn't bark
Health and Social Change
Rethinking Prostitution
The growth of AIDS has focused renewed attention on the institution of prostitution. In contrast to the moral panic reaction of some sectors of society, very different initiatives are being displayed by other groups in relation to the need to scrutinize the social, moral and legal status of prostitution and to reflect on the arguments in support of or against legalising brothels, paying particular concern to prostitutes' own health. Rethinking Pr…
Rethinking Prostitution
Re-framing Stigma
Theorizing Research and Researching Theory
Modernity, Medicine and Health
Sociology (64 obras) · Political science (44 obras) · Medicine (40 obras) · Psychology (35 obras) · Social science (32 obras) · Epistemology (30 obras) · Law (28 obras) · Philosophy (25 obras) · Social Psychology (19 obras) · Politics (17 obras)