Expanding the Social: Moving Towards the Ecological in Social Studies of Health

Abstract

Purpose

A crucial contemporary public health issue is the construction and contestation of the relevance of the natural world to human health.

Approach

Taking a critical approach, this chapter examines how the natural environment as a health determinant is positioned in relation to the ‘social’ within social theory generally and social epidemiological studies of health, illness and disease specifically.

Findings

– This study shows how current constructions of social and natural environmental health drivers contour social approaches to the study of health and proposes an integrated social-ecological approach for generating new contributions of social epidemiology to research on environmentally driven health injuries.

Originality

– The research breaks ground for further social scientific studies of health and the environment and in particular substantiates the call for an extended notion of the ‘environment’ using ecological principles. Methodologically, the interdisciplinary reach of this research draws attention to the tensions that arise when working across the medical, natural and social sciences.

Citation

Gislason, M.K. (2013), "Expanding the Social: Moving Towards the Ecological in Social Studies of Health", Ecological Health: Society, Ecology and Health (Advances in Medical Sociology, Vol. 15), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 3-22. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1057-6290(2013)0000015004