WHAT IS SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION? WHAT ARE THE KEY DEFINITIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION?

(West, 1993)

Where as the western medicine define illness as an impairment of the physiological function affecting parts or all of an organism (Nettleton, 1995). The different nature of eastern and western ideas of nature explains that illness is a socially constructed concept. There are factors that contribute and have control over social construction of illness. These factors are culture, religion, class and gender.

In this day societies, there are common belief that our bodies are like machine and doctors are mechanics. Moreover in the olden days, it was religious figures like gods who determined what illness was. For instance mental illness was explained as God's punishment to sinners. In order for illness to exist, there are some characteristics that one has to show before being classified as being ill. This depends on health professional or spiritual healers to label them as having an illness.

Before the enlightment, diseases were viewed as a sign of someone having a damaged soul. And after the enlightment, medical professionals replace the spiritual notions of madness with medical notion of mental illness (Turner, 1994). Illness was born or social constructed. What one recognises as illness has changed over time. Also society has a great influence over what is considered as an illness.

In the western society, women are more medicalized than men. Childbirth, reproduction and mental health for instance. Women are more to be treated with depression. So as one can see, the social construction has not ended but continues to expand, defining non-medical problems or illness in medical terms and solving it with medical solution, this is known as medicalisation.

(Oakley 1987)

In concluding, illness is socially constructed, so social construction is therefore a process whereby reality is interpreted and grouped according to a set of values. The author also noticed that medicalization is a form of social construction. Because one of the disadvantages of medicalization is social control. Therefore social construction, medicalization and social control work together in analyzing illness and are very much important in today's health.

Reference:

. Marshall, G. (1998) Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford University Press.

2. Nettleton, S. (1995) The Sociology of Health and Illness. Cambridge: Polity

3. Oakley, A. (1987) ' From walking wombs to test-tube babies', in M. Stanworth

(1st ed), Reproductive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood and Medicine. Cambridge: Polity.

4. Turner, B. S. (1994) Medical Power and Social Knowledge. Sage: London.

5. West, P. (1998) The Rejected Body. Routledge: London