Resources

Please see below for information on conferences, books, graduate programs, and various other resources of interest to section members. These listings are updated upon request.

Please note the new fund for graduate travel! Through the generosity of Diane Kaplan and the Kaplan family, the section has established a new fund: the Howard B. Kaplan Memorial Award in Medical Sociology. Howard was a core member of the section for many years. He not only was an eminent scholar in areas relating to longitudinal studies of the self concept and health but also was instrumental in establishing new journals and a series of handbooks in our field. In honor of Howard's pathbreaking contributions to medical sociology, the Kaplan family has established this award to support graduate students doing research in one of the substantive areas that defined Howard's distinguished academic career. It will provide one graduate student each year funds up to $500 to attend the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Priority will be given to graduate students who are working in Howard's areas of mental health, self concept and health, or deviance. If you would like to nominate one of your students (self-nominations from graduate students will also be accepted), please send a CV and a brief cover letter of nomination to ahorwitz@sas.rutgers.edu

handbooks & manuscripts

Associations & Grants

Sociology Associations

Grant Opportunities


Conferences

  • North Central Sociological Association

    Indianapolis, IN; April 4-7, 2013

  • Knowing Practices

    Second International HIV Social Sciences and Humanities Conference; Paris, France; 7-10 July 2013

  • New Social Media, and Life, Politics, and Society in the Early 21st Century

    Southwestern Sociological Association Meeting; New Orleans, Louisiana; March 27-30, 2013

  • Re-imagining Social Problems: Moving Beyond Social Constructionism​

    The Society for the Study of Social Problems; August 9-11, 2013; New York, NY

  • ​Interrogating Inequality: Linking Micro and Macro

    American Sociological Association 108th Annual Meeting; New York, NY; August 10-13, 2013

  • Disabilities and Disclosure Conference, University of Delaware from October 25-27, 2013.

Graduate Programs

Data & Funding Agencies

New Journal Issue

Sociology of Health & Illness: Special Issue: Pandemics and Emerging Infectious Diseases: the Sociological Agenda

February 2013, Volume 35, Issue 2, Pages 167–344 Infectious disease has re-emerged as a public health threat in an increasingly globalised era, adding trans-national actors to traditional national and local government actors. This special issue showcases new sociological work in response to this challenge. The contributors have investigated the social construction of new and re-emerging diseases; the development of surveillance systems, public health governance; the impact of scientific/technical modalities on uncertainty and risk, the interplay of infectious disease, public health and national security concerns, and public and media responses. The case studies range broadly across North America, Europe and Asia and define new agendas for medical sociologists and public health policymakers.

New Books

Knowledge in the Time of Cholera: The Struggle over American Medicine in the 19th Century

Owen Whooley

Vomiting. Diarrhea. Dehydration. Death. Confusion. In 1832, the arrival of cholera in the United States created widespread panic throughout the country. For the rest of the century, epidemics swept through American cities and towns like wildfire, killing thousands. Physicians of all stripes offered conflicting answers to the cholera puzzle, ineffectively responding with opiates, bleeding, quarantines, and all manner of remedies, before the identity of the dreaded infection was consolidated under the germ theory of disease some sixty years later. These cholera outbreaks raised fundamental questions about medical knowledge and its legitimacy, giving fuel to alternative medical sects that used the confusion of the epidemic to challenge both medical orthodoxy and the authority of the still-new American Medical Association. In Knowledge in the Time of Cholera, Owen Whooley tells us the story of those dark days, centering his narrative on rivalries between medical and homeopathic practitioners and bringing to life the battle to control public understanding of disease, professional power, and democratic governance in nineteenth-century America. University of Chicago Press

Disability and Identity: Negotiating Self in a Changing Society

Rosalyn Benjamin Darling

Rosalyn Darling offers a sweeping examination of disability and identity, parsing the shifting forces that have shaped individual and societal understandings of ability and impairment across time. Darling focuses on the relationship between societal views and the self-conceptions of people with mental and physical impairments. She also illuminates the impact of the disability rights movement, life-course dynamics, and race and gender in creating a diversity of disability identities. Her seminal work reveals the remarkable resilience of individuals in the face of profound social and material barriers, at the same time that it enhances our understanding of the construction and experience of "difference" in our changing society.

Alzheimer's Disease, Media Representations and the Politics of Euthanasia: Constructing Risk and Selling Death in an Ageing Society

George W. Dowdall

Drawing on extensive data including news media reports and commentaries, documentaries, courts and court reports, films, websites, professional literature and government and non-government agencies, this book explores the 'Alzheimerisation' of the euthanasia debate, examining the shift in recent years in public attitudes towards the desirability and moral permissibility of euthanasia as an end-of-life 'solution' for people living with the disease - not just at its end stage, but also at earlier stages. With attention to media representations and public understandings of Alzheimer's disease, Alzheimer's Disease, Media Representations and the Politics of Euthanasia sheds light on the processes contributing to these changes in public opinion, investigating the drivers of vexed political debate surrounding the issue and examining the manner in which both sides of the euthanasia debate mobilise support, portray their opponents and make use of media technologies to frame the terms of discourse.