Whilst reading Kleinman's book 'Pateints and Healers in the Context of Culture' in preparation for writing my Turquoise Chapeter, I came upon a series of concepts that I found both interesting and relevant to the PhD.  I have recorded them here as a way of being able to re-access them in the future:

~ Healthcare activities need to be studied holistically in the context that they are socially organised responses to disease
~ Medicine is a cultural system - a system of symbolic meanings anchored in particular arrangements of soical institutions and patterns of interpersonal interactions
~ In every culture, the responses to illness by the individuals experiencing it, those treating it and the social institutions relating to it are all systematically interconnected
~ The totality of the relationships is the healthcare system

Two key writers I need to visit/revisit are Zola (1972) and Illich (1975) who both write about the medicalisation of society.

Giddens (1976) also has something to say: the cultural analysis of any concrete aspect of the social world should attend to the effects produced by the interplay of 3 types of forces:

~ Meaning
~ Norms
~ Power

The power differential between the sick role and the therapeutic role is an ideal example of this.