Social medicine and sociology: the productiveness of antagonisms arising from maintaining disciplinary boundaries

Abstract

This essay considers the boundaries between the sociology of medicine and social medicine and the reasons distinctions are maintained between the two disciplines. To investigate, the essay asks what constitutes the distinction between social sciences and social medicine, and goes on to question historical distinctions of how foundational sociology is to social medicine; how much autonomy the sociology of medicine should have; contemporary challenges to the relation between sociology and social medicine; and the status of ethics, both traditionally and contemporarily, between sociology and social medicine. In the face of increasing emphases on interdisciplinarity, this essay offers a note of caution by demonstrating how the antagonism between sociology and social medicine is important as a site that produces a necessary polemic. Ultimately, I argue that the social sciences and social medicine are linked in a productive relationship that instates and reinstates their respective functions and values in a process that validates the practice of modern medicine.

The Cultural Politics of ‘Implementation Science’

“…The problem, however, is that many of these traditions are founded precisely on their irreconcilability with positivism and are more readily sceptical or critical of the boundaries of the evidence-based movement. Traditionally, such critical perspectives have served to counter evidence-based medicine independent from the resources, power structures and vested interests that evidence-based medicine may or may not serve (Boulton 2017). To what extent are they to be accounted for in implementation science?…”