Abstract
“Global health” is more a collection of problems than a discipline. This chapter presents a “toolkit” of social theories relevant to global health research and practice. This toolkit is not meant to be an exhaustive overview of all the theoretical frames at our disposal. Rather, it is meant to illustrate how social theory – when linked to social history and political economy – can be used to better understand the various facets of global health and health care delivery.
To further the capabilities of scholars and practitioners in global health, the chapter outlines five key social theories that can be used to interpret and understand the nature, consequences, and limitations of biomedical and public health interventions: (1) the social construction of reality, as introduced by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann; (2) Robert Merton’s theory of the unintended consequences of purposive action; (3) Max Weber’s vision of modernity; (4) Michel Foucault’s theory of governmentality and biopower; and (5) the theory of social suffering, as introduced by Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock, alongside Paul Farmer’s conceptualization of structural violence.
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Wilkinson, G., Keshavjee, S., Hanna, B., Kleinman, A. (2021). Social Theories for Global Health Research and Practice. In: Kickbusch, I., Ganten, D., Moeti, M. (eds) Handbook of Global Health. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45009-0_51
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