Discuss the Conflict perspective on Health Care.
- The conflict perspective focuses on how wealth, status, power, and the profit motive influence illness and healthcare.
- The conflict perspective criticizes the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry for placing profits above people.
- The conflict perspective points to ways in which powerful groups and wealthy corporations influence health-related policies and laws through financial contributions to politicians and political candidates and other means.
- Conflict theorists also point to ways in which health care and research are influenced by male domination and bias.
- IN THE OLD DAYS DOCTORS WERE EXPECTED TO PUT THE HEALTH OF PATIENT BEFORE PROFITS BUT TODAY BIG CORPORATIONS PUT PROFIT FIRST
- A LOT OF HEALTH CARE REALTED DECISIONS BASED ON PROFIT
- HEALTH CARE CORPORATIONS USE MONEY TO SHAPE GOVERNMENTAL HEALTH POLICY
What is Medicalization? How do conflict theorists view it?
- Medicalization is a trend of defining or labeling behaviors and conditions as medical problems.
- Occurs 1) when a particular behavior or condition deemed immoral was transformed from a legal problem into a medical problem that required medical treatment,
- 2) Any new phenomena defined as medical problems in need of medical intervention, 3) and �normal� biological events or conditions that have come to be defined as medical problems in need of medical intervention.
- Conflict theorists views Medicalization as resulting from the medical profession's domination and pursuit of profits.
- EXPANSION OF THE MEDICAL MODEL TO NORMAL STRESS AND PROBLEMS
- MEDICAL MODEL- 1) YOU HAVE ILLENSS 2) IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT 3) CURED BY DRUGS, THERAPY OR SUPPORT
Compare our healthcare system with other countries.
- Other countries are single payer systems while we are the only ones with a fee paid.
- Life expectancy is the average number of years that individuals born in a given year can expect to live.
- Japan has the longest life expectancy (82 years), Swaziland has the lowest life expectancy (30 years), while the U.S. has a life expectancy of about 79 years.
- The infant mortality rate is the number of deaths of live-born infants under 1 year of age per 1,000 live births in a year, provides an important measure of the health of a population.
- The U.S. infant mortality rate was 6, and 34 countries had infant mortality rates that were lower than that of the U.S.
Discuss Merton's Strain Theory, describe and explain the modes of adaption. List at least one weakness.
- Uses Durkheim's concept of anomie (normlessness).
- Merton argued that when legitimate means of acquiring culturally defined goals are limited by the structure of society, the resulting strain may lead to crime.
- Modes of adaption include: 1) Conformity - occurs when individuals accept the culturally defined goals and the socially legitimate means of achieving them. (Most people)
- 2) Innovation - occurs when an individual accepts the goals of society but rejects or lacks the socially legitimate means of achieving them. (criminal, poor)
- 3) Ritualism - Is which the individual accepts a life style of hard work but rejects the cultural goal of monetary rewards. (Get education and work hard but not committed to goal of accumulating wealth/power)
- 4) Retreatism - involves rejecting both the cultural goal of success and the socially legitimate means os achieving it. (alcoholic, drug addict, vagrant)
- 5) Rebellion - occurs when an individual rejects both culturally defined goals and means and substitutes new goals and means.
- MERTON: STRAIN THEORY
- UNIVERSAL GOALS LEGITIMATE MEANS
- YES YES CONFORMISTS
- YES NO INNOVATOR
- NO YES RITUALIST
- NO NO RETREATISM
- NO/YES NO/YES REBELLION
- A weakness of the strain theory is that it does not explain elite crime.
Discuss the symbolic interactionist association perspective on crime. (Labeling theory and differential.)
- 1) Labeling theory focuses on how crime and deviance come to be defined as such and effects of being labeled a criminal or deviant.
- Distinguish between primary deviance, the first deviance before caught, and secondary deviance, deviance after caught and labeled an offender.
- After a person violates the law and is caught the person is stigmatized as a criminal, and often becomes their "master status."
- Being labeled as deviant often leads to further deviant behavior because the person is often denied opportunities in nondeviant behavior and adopts deviant labels and acts accordingly.
- A) REALTION BETWEEN STATUS (POSITION) AND ROLE (BEHAVIOR)
- B) PRIMARY DEVIANCE
- a. NORMAL LAW BREAKING
- b. NOT GET CAUGHT
- c. DAVE - JUNIOR - MSU - POT
- i. NOT THINK OF SELF AS CRIMINAL OR SUBSTANCE ABUSER
- ii. BUSTED - LABELING
- iii. DAVE STARTS TO THINK OF SELF AS SUBSTANCE ABUSER
- C) SECONDARY DEVIANCE - STIGMA (a discrediting label that affects an individual�s self-concept and disqualifies that person from full social acceptance)
- 2) Edward Sutherland proposed that through interaction with others, individuals learn the values and attitudes associated with crime as well as the techniques and motivations for criminal behavior.
- Individuals exposed to more definitions favorable to law violation than unfavorable ones are more likely to engage in criminal behavior.
- 1) CRIME IS LEARNED
- 2) WHEN YOU LEARN HOW TO DO A CRIME, YOU LEARN AN IDEOLOGY THAT SAYS ITS OK TO DO THE CRIME
- 3) THERE ARE PEOPLE IN YOUR SOCIAL NETWORK WHO FAVOR DOING CRIMES - OTHER NOT
- 4) IF MOST OF THE PEOPLE IN YOUR NETWORK FAVOR CRIME YOU WILL DO CRIME
Discuss the conflict perspective on drug use.
- The conflict perspective emphasizes the importance of power differentials in influencing drug use behavior and societal values concerning drug use.
- From a conflict perspective drug use occurs as a response to the inequality perpetuated by a capitalist system.
- Conflict theorists emphasize that the most powerful members of society influence the definitions of which drugs are illegal and the penalties associated with illegal drug production, sales, and use.
- The criminalization of other drugs follows similar patterns of social control of the powerless, political opponents, and/or minorities.
- CRIME AND DRUG USE ARE ASSOCIATED WITH THE UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF MONEY AND POWER
- a) OLD MARXIST - POVERTY CAUSES CRIME AND DRUG USE (MONEY)
- b) NEW MARXIST - SAY CRIME AND DRUG USE IS FOUND IN UPPER CLASSES
- a. FOCUS - POWERFUL DEFINE THE LAWS ABOUT (POWER)
Discuss the "health-based" illegal drug policies of the Netherlands and Great Britian.
- The Netherlands has had an unofficial government policy of treating the use of drugs as a health issue rather than a crime issue since the mid-1970s. In the 1990s "cannabis cafes" came out, those coffee shops sell small amounts of marijuana for personal use and, presumably, prevent casual marijuana users from coming into contact with drug dealers. Some evidence suggest that marijuana use among Dutch youth is decreasing.
- Great Britian as early as the 1960s, English doctors prescribed opiates and cocaine for their patients who were unlikely to quit using drugs on their own and for treatment of withdrawal symptoms. Today, British government policy provides for limited distribution of drugs by licensed drug treatment specialists to addicts who might otherwise resort to crime to support their habits.
Discuss the US Governments regulation on drug use.
- The largest social policy attempt to control drug use in the U.S. was Prohibition, though it failed.
- In the 1980s the federal government declared a "war on drugs" which was based on the belief that controlling drug availability would limit drug use and drug related problems.
- In contrast to a harm reduction position, which focuses on minimizing the costs of drug use for both user and society, thus "zero-tolerance" approach advocates get-tough law enforcement policies.
- The war on drugs costs billion's of dollars and the U.S. policy on fighting drugs is two pronged. 1) is demand reduction, which entails reducing the demand for drugs through treatment and prevention. The 2) strategy is supply reduction, which relies on international efforts, interdiction, and domestic law enforcement to reduce the supply of illegal drugs.
- DRUG LAWS ARE DESIGNED TO BE A POLITICAL TOOL USED AGAINST CERTAIN PEOPLE
- NO GOOD OR BAD DRUGS - JUST BAD USE