Urban and Rural Problems Reflection Paper Please read the chapter and summarize one problem from chapter 13 and one from chapter 14 (in a different word do

Urban and Rural Problems Reflection Paper Please read the chapter and summarize one problem from chapter 13 and one from chapter 14 (in a different word document). Each one should be about 1/2 page or more.

I have uploaded chapter 13 and 14 reading and the grading scale.

Let me know if you have any questions

Requirements
The Problem–After you read the chapter and any supplemental readings and view any videos, summarize the problem and how it affects society. Cite your sources in APA format. I suggest you download the APA chapter from Rules for Writers so that you have it handy for this class and any subsequent classes you have that use APA. This section should be at least 1/2 page and must include at least two sources. It should include the chapter under consideration, but also can include any other chapter, reading, or video from class. No outside sources are used. Do not quote from any source; paraphrase or summarize the information.
How this Problem has Affected You–Discuss how it has affected you. For example, I could discuss inequality in the workplace based on sex and talk about how I had a job were I started on the same day as a man and we did the same job, but he was paid more per hour than me. Or I could discuss alcohol abuse and talk about what affect my alcoholic aunt had on me growing up. This section should be at least 1/2 page; start this section right after your are done with section 1.
References–List all references cited in section 1 in APA format. You can start this section after you are done with section 2.

Check out the grading rubric in the assignment.

Papers will be graded out of 15 points on the content and also on grammar, mechanics, organization, and use of headings, correct APA citations and referencesand length. I have highlighted the parts of the APA guide that are most commonly used. Papers that don’t cite properly will not be able to earn an A, so take a little bit of time to be sure you have cited properly. If you have any questions, ask me.

General Guidelines
Do not include a cover page, running head, or abstract; you don’t even need to put your name since Canvas knows who you are.
You do not need a separate introduction, just address each section. Each section should be a series of fully formed and cohesive sentences and paragraphs focused on the topic of that heading.
Use college-level English writing skills. Proofread your papers.
Recall that for APA, every citation must appear in the references and every reference must be cited.
APA does not use long signal phrases such as “John Smith (2012) says in his article The Sociology of TV in the Journal Sociology…” Instead APA format would state “According to Smith (2012)…” APA does not care about first names, and the publication and article titles are in the reference list so do NOT state them in the text. Do not do this to make your paper longer. I will notice and you will be marked off.
Plagiarism

I strongly suggest you submit your paper to the Drafts assignment in our course to check for plagiarism. Look at all matches and make appropriate changes, strive for a 0% match, but use reason when looking at the feedback. References will match of course if you have done them correctly, these matches are ok.

Submit your papers to the two reflection assignments before the date and time the module quiz is due. Find them in the Resources for this Week section of each module (2-8). You can do two in one module or spread them out, but I suggest you do those that are most interesting to you and those that you can relate to yourself. Chapter 13: Health and Health Care
“More Columbus Kids Living in Poverty,” the headline said. New data from the Ohio
Department of Education showed that three-fourths of schoolchildren in Columbus, Ohio, live in
poverty or near poverty and qualify for federally subsidized school lunch. Ten years earlier, only
about 58 percent of Columbus children qualified. According to the news report, “Childhood poverty
directly impacts children’s health. Children living in poverty are less likely to receive needed medical
care, more likely to have health problems such as asthma, more likely to be overweight, among other
health problems.”
Source: Lietz, 2012
A sociological approach emphasizes that our social class, race and ethnicity, and gender, among other aspects
of our social backgrounds, influence our levels of health and illness.
U.S. Army Garrison Japan – Arnn students celebrate diversity; weeklong recognition – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
This news story reminds us that social class is linked to health and illness, and it illustrates just one of the
many ways in which health and health care are urgent problems in our society. Accordingly, this chapter examines
these problems. Its discussion is based on the common sociological view that health and illness are not just medical
problems but social problems.
Unlike physicians, sociologists and other public health scholars do not try to understand why any one person
becomes ill. Instead, they typically examine rates of illness to explain why people from certain social backgrounds
are more likely than those from others to become sick. Here, as we will see, our social backgrounds—our social
class, race and ethnicity, and gender—make a critical difference.
The fact that our social backgrounds affect our health may be difficult for many of us to accept. We all know
someone who has died from a serious illness or currently suffers from one. There is always a medical cause of this
person’s illness, and physicians do their best to try to cure it and prevent it from recurring. Sometimes they succeed;
sometimes they fail. Whether someone suffers a serious illness is often simply a matter of bad luck or bad genes:
We can do everything right and still become ill. In saying that our social backgrounds affect our health, sociologists
do not deny any of these possibilities. They simply remind us that our social backgrounds also play an important
role (Cockerham, 2012).
With this basic understanding in mind, we now turn to sociological perspectives on health and health care.
References
Cockerham, W. C. (2012). Medical sociology (12th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Lietz, J. (2012, January 17). More Columbus kids living in poverty. Examiner.com. Retrieved from
http://www.examiner.com/children-s-health-in-columbus/more-columbus-kids-living-poverty.
13.1 Sociological Perspectives on Health and Health Care
1. List the assumptions of the functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionist
perspectives on health and medicine.
1. List the assumptions of the functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionist perspectives on
health and medicine.
Before discussing these perspectives, we must first define three key concepts—health, medicine, and health
care—that lie at the heart of their explanations and of this chapter’s discussion. Health refers to the extent of a
person’s physical, mental, and social well-being. As this definition suggests, health is a multidimensional concept.
Although the three dimensions of health just listed often affect each other, it is possible for someone to be in good
physical health and poor mental health, or vice versa. Medicine refers to the social institution that seeks to prevent,
diagnose, and treat illness and to promote health in its various dimensions. This social institution in the United States
is vast, to put it mildly, and involves more than 11 million people (physicians, nurses, dentists, therapists, medical
records technicians, and many other occupations). Finally, health care refers to the provision of medical services to
prevent, diagnose, and treat health problems.
With these definitions in mind, we now turn to sociological explanations of health and health care. As usual, the
major sociological perspectives that we have discussed throughout this book offer different types of explanations,
but together they provide us with a more comprehensive understanding than any one approach can do by itself.
Table 13.1 “Theory Snapshot” summarizes what they say.
Table 13.1 Theory Snapshot
Theoretica
l
perspective
Major assumptions
Good health and effective medical care are essential for the smooth functioning of society. Patients must
perform the “sick role” in order to be perceived as legitimately ill and to be exempt from their normal
Functionalism
obligations. The physician-patient relationship is hierarchical: The physician provides instructions, and the
patient needs to follow them.
Conflic
t theory
Social inequality characterizes the quality of health and the quality of health care. People from
disadvantaged social backgrounds are more likely to become ill and to receive inadequate health care. Partly
to increase their incomes, physicians have tried to control the practice of medicine and to define social
problems as medical problems.
Symbolic
interactionism
Health and illness are social constructions: Physical and mental conditions have little or no objective reality
but instead are considered healthy or ill conditions only if they are defined as such by a society. Physicians
“manage the situation” to display their authority and medical knowledge.
513
The Functionalist Approach
As conceived by Talcott Parsons (1951), the functionalist perspective emphasizes that good health and effective
medical care are essential for a society’s ability to function. Ill health impairs our ability to perform our roles in
society, and if too many people are unhealthy, society’s functioning and stability suffer. This was especially true
for premature death, said Parsons, because it prevents individuals from fully carrying out all their social roles and
thus represents a “poor return” to society for the various costs of pregnancy, birth, child care, and socialization of
the individual who ends up dying early. Poor medical care is likewise dysfunctional for society, as people who are
ill face greater difficulty in becoming healthy and people who are healthy are more likely to become ill.
For a person to be considered legitimately sick, said Parsons, several expectations must be met. He referred
to these expectations as the sick role. First, sick people should not be perceived as having caused their own health
problem. If we eat high-fat food, become obese, and have a heart attack, we evoke less sympathy than if we had
practiced good nutrition and maintained a proper weight. If someone is driving drunk and smashes into a tree, there
is much less sympathy than if the driver had been sober and skidded off the road in icy weather.
Second, sick people must want to get well. If they do not want to get well or, worse yet, are perceived as faking
their illness or malingering after becoming healthier, they are no longer considered legitimately ill by the people
who know them or, more generally, by society itself.
Third, sick people are expected to have their illness confirmed by a physician or other health-care professional
and to follow the professional’s instructions in order to become well. If a sick person fails to do so, she or he again
loses the right to perform the sick role.
Talcott Parsons wrote that for a person to be perceived as legitimately ill, several expectations, called the sick
role, must be met. These expectations include the perception that the person did not cause her or his own health
problem.
Nathalie Babineau-Griffith – grand-maman’s blanket – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
If all these expectations are met, said Parsons, sick people are treated as sick by their family, their friends, and
13.1 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE • 515
other people they know, and they become exempt from their normal obligations to all these people. Sometimes they
are even told to stay in bed when they want to remain active.
Physicians also have a role to perform, said Parsons. First and foremost, they have to diagnose the person’s
illness, decide how to treat it, and help the person become well. To do so, they need the cooperation of the patient,
who must answer the physician’s questions accurately and follow the physician’s instructions. Parsons thus viewed
the physician-patient relationship as hierarchical: the physician gives the orders (or, more accurately, provides
advice and instructions), and the patient follows them.
Parsons was certainly right in emphasizing the importance of individuals’ good health for society’s health, but
his perspective has been criticized for several reasons. First, his idea of the sick role applies more to acute (shortterm) illness than to chronic (long-term) illness. Although much of his discussion implies a person temporarily
enters a sick role and leaves it soon after following adequate medical care, people with chronic illnesses can be
locked into a sick role for a very long time or even permanently. Second, Parsons’s discussion ignores the fact,
mentioned earlier, that our social backgrounds affect the likelihood of becoming ill and the quality of medical care
we receive. Third, Parsons wrote approvingly of the hierarchy implicit in the physician-patient relationship. Many
experts say today that patients need to reduce this hierarchy by asking more questions of their physicians and by
taking a more active role in maintaining their health. To the extent that physicians do not always provide the best
medical care, the hierarchy that Parsons favored is at least partly to blame.
The Conflict Approach
The conflict approach emphasizes inequality in the quality of health and of health-care delivery (Weitz, 2013). As
noted earlier, the quality of health and health care differs greatly around the world and within the United States.
Society’s inequities along social class, race and ethnicity, and gender lines are reproduced in our health and health
care. People from disadvantaged social backgrounds are more likely to become ill, and once they do become ill,
inadequate health care makes it more difficult for them to become well. As we will see, the evidence of disparities
in health and health care is vast and dramatic.
The conflict approach also critiques efforts by physicians over the decades to control the practice of medicine
and to define various social problems as medical ones. Physicians’ motivation for doing so has been both good and
bad. On the good side, they have believed they are the most qualified professionals to diagnose problems and to
treat people who have these problems. On the negative side, they have also recognized that their financial status will
improve if they succeed in characterizing social problems as medical problems and in monopolizing the treatment of
these problems. Once these problems become “medicalized,” their possible social roots and thus potential solutions
are neglected.
Several examples illustrate conflict theory’s criticism. Alternative medicine is becoming increasingly popular,
but so has criticism of it by the medical establishment. Physicians may honestly feel that medical alternatives are
inadequate, ineffective, or even dangerous, but they also recognize that the use of these alternatives is financially
harmful to their own practices. Eating disorders also illustrate conflict theory’s criticism. Many of the women and
girls who have eating disorders receive help from a physician, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, or another healthcare professional. Although this care is often very helpful, the definition of eating disorders as a medical problem
nonetheless provides a good source of income for the professionals who treat it and obscures its cultural roots in
society’s standard of beauty for women (Whitehead & Kurz, 2008).
Obstetrical care provides another example. In most of human history, midwives or their equivalent were the
people who helped pregnant women deliver their babies. In the nineteenth century, physicians claimed they were
better trained than midwives and won legislation giving them authority to deliver babies. They may have honestly
felt that midwives were inadequately trained, but they also fully recognized that obstetrical care would be quite
lucrative (Ehrenreich & English, 2005).
13.1 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE • 516
According to conflict theory, physicians have often sought to define various social problems as medical
problems. An example is the development of the diagnosis of ADHD, or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
birgerking – What I Really Do… ADD/ADHD – CC BY 2.0.
In a final example, many hyperactive children are now diagnosed with ADHD, or attention deficit/
hyperactivity disorder. A generation or more ago, they would have been considered merely as overly active. After
Ritalin, a drug that reduces hyperactivity, was developed, their behavior came to be considered a medical problem
and the ADHD diagnosis was increasingly applied, and tens of thousands of children went to physicians’ offices
and were given Ritalin or similar drugs. The definition of their behavior as a medical problem was very lucrative for
physicians and for the company that developed Ritalin, and it also obscured the possible roots of their behavior in
inadequate parenting, stultifying schools, or even gender socialization, as most hyperactive kids are boys (Conrad,
2008; Rao & Seaton, 2010).
Critics say the conflict approach’s assessment of health and medicine is overly harsh and its criticism of
physicians’ motivation far too cynical. Scientific medicine has greatly improved the health of people around the
world. Although physicians are certainly motivated, as many people are, by economic considerations, their efforts
to extend their scope into previously nonmedical areas also stem from honest beliefs that people’s health and lives
will improve if these efforts succeed. Certainly there is some truth in this criticism of the conflict approach, but the
evidence of inequality in health and medicine and of the negative aspects of the medical establishment’s motivation
for extending its reach remains compelling.
The Symbolic Interactionist Approach
The symbolic interactionist approach emphasizes that health and illness are social constructions. This means that
various physical and mental conditions have little or no objective reality but instead are considered healthy or ill
conditions only if they are defined as such by a society and its members (Buckser, 2009; Lorber & Moore, 2002).
13.1 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE • 517
The ADHD example just discussed also illustrates symbolic interactionist theory’s concerns, as a behavior that
was not previously considered an illness came to be defined as one after the development of Ritalin. In another
example first discussed in Chapter 7 “Alcohol and Other Drugs”, in the late 1800s opium use was quite common
in the United States, as opium derivatives were included in all sorts of over-the-counter products. Opium use was
considered neither a major health nor legal problem. That changed by the end of the century, as prejudice against
Chinese Americans led to the banning of the opium dens (similar to today’s bars) they frequented, and calls for the
banning of opium led to federal legislation early in the twentieth century that banned most opium products except
by prescription (Musto, 2002).
In a more current example, an attempt to redefine obesity is now under way in the United States. Obesity is a
known health risk, but a “fat pride” or “fat acceptance” movement composed mainly of heavy individuals is arguing
that obesity’s health risks are exaggerated and calling attention to society’s discrimination against overweight
people. Although such discrimination is certainly unfortunate, critics say the movement is going too far in trying to
minimize obesity’s risks (Diamond, 2011).
The symbolic interactionist approach has also provided important studies of the interaction between patients
and health-care professionals. Consciously or not, physicians “manage the situation” to display their authority and
medical knowledge. Patients usually have to wait a long time for the physician to show up, and the physician is
often in a white lab coat; the physician is also often addressed as “Doctor,” while patients are often called by their
first name. Physicians typically use complex medical terms to describe a patient’s illness instead of the more simple
terms used by laypeople and the patients themselves.
Management of the situation is perhaps especially important during a gynecological exam, as first discussed in
Chapter 12 “Work and the Economy”. When the physician is a man, this situation is fraught with potential
embarrassment and uneasiness because a man is examining and touching a woman’s genital area. Under these
circumstances, the physician must act in a purely professional manner. He must indicate no personal interest in the
woman’s body and must instead treat the exam no differently from any other type of exam. To further “desex” the
situation and reduce any potential uneasiness, a female nurse is often present during the exam.
Critics fault the symbolic interactionist approach for implying that no illnesses have objective reality. Many
serious health conditions do exist and put people at risk for their health regardless of what they or their society
thinks. Critics also say the approach neglects the effects of social inequality for health and illness. Despite these
possible faults, the symbolic interactionist approach reminds us that health and illness do have a subjective as well
as an objective reality.
• A sociological understanding emphasizes the influence of people’s social backgrounds on
the quality of their health and health care. A society’s culture and social structure also
affect health and health care.
• The functionalist approach emphasizes that good health and effective health care are
essential for a society’s ability to function, and it views the physician-patient relationship as
hierarchical.
• The conflict approach emphasizes inequality in the quality of health and in the quality of
health care.
• The interactionist approach emphasizes that health and illness are social constructions;
physical and mental conditions have little or no objective reality but instead are
considered healthy or ill conditions only if they are defined as such by a society and its
members.
13.1 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE • 518
1. Which approach—functionalist, conflict, or symbolic interactionist—do you most
favor regarding how you understand health and health care? Explain your answer.
2. Think of the last time you visited a physician or another health-care professional. In what
ways did this person come across as an authority figure possessing medical knowledge? In
formulating your answer, think about the person’s clothing, body position and body
language, and other aspects of nonverbal communication.
References
Buckser, A. (2009). Institutions, agency, and illness in the making of Tourette syndrome. Human Organization,
68(3), 293–306.
Conrad, P. (2008). The medicalization of society: On the transformation of human conditions into treatable
disorders. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Diamond, A. (2011). Acceptance of fat as the norm is a cause for concern. Nursing Standard, 25(38), 28–28.
Lorber, J., & Moore, L. J. (2002). Gender and the social construction of illness (2nd ed.). Lanham, MD:
Row…
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