Chapter 20: Sociologies of public health and health promotion

Abstract

Sociology and public health both trace their roots to nineteenth-century industrialisation, and are shaped by colonial histories of the period. Whilst Anglophone traditions of public health diverged from sociological theories of power and inequality, approaches such as social medicine continued and deepened this engagement in regions such as Latin America. There are multiple sociological entanglements with public health and health promotion. These include theoretical and empirical sociological evidence on the social and political determinants of health, and a range of critical traditions asking how public health has been deployed in society, and with what effects. Analyses drawing on Foucault have explored public health as an aspect of contemporary governance, operating through technologies of normalisation, surveillance and risk management. More recently, theoretical approaches from science and technology studies and new materialisms have refocused sociological research on the more-than-human assemblages of technologies, non-human species and environments that make up public health.