Order Description
The exam will consist of multiple choice questions. To answer these questions correctly you will need to have carefully read the essential readings . There are 30 questions in the exam
If you are struggling with the exam – go back and read the readings again!
the reading :
* Klein, Richard (2010) ?What is Health and How Do You Get it?? in Metzl, Jonathan & Anna Kirkland (eds.) Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality, New York: NYUP, pp.15-25.
* Cheek, Julianne (2008) ?Healthism: A New Conservatism? Qualitative Health Research, Volume 18 Number 7 July 2008 974-982
* Conrad, Peter & Kristin K. Barker (2010) ?The Social Construction of Illness: Key Insights and Policy Implications?, Journal of Health & Social Behavior, 51:S, 67-79.
* Halfmann, Drew (2011) ?Recognizing Medicalization and Demedicalization: Discourses, Practices, and Identities?, Health, 16:2, 186-207.
*Rose, Nikolas (2007) ?Beyond medicalization? from The Lancet, 24 Feb to 2 Mar Vol 369 Issue 9562 pp.700-702
*Foucault, Michel (1980) ?The Politics of Health in the Eighteenth Century? in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Writings 1972 ? 1977 (edited by Colin Gordon) New York: Pantheon Books, pp 166 ? 182
* Philip Tovey , Karl Atkin & Timothy Milewa (2001) The individual and primary care: Service user, reflexive choice maker and collective actor, Critical Public Health, 11:2, 153-166
* Topol, Eric (2015) The Patient Will See You Now, New York: Basic pp.3-12, 275-83
* Nike Ayo (2012) Understanding health promotion in a neoliberal climate and the making of health conscious citizens, Critical Public Health, 22:1, 99-105
* Hallin, Daniel and Briggs, Charles (2015) ?Transcending the medical/ media opposition in research on news coverage of health and medicine? Media, Culture & Society 2015, Vol. 37(1) 85?100
Diprose, Rosalind (2008) ?Biopolitical technologies of prevention? Health Sociology Review 17(2) 141-50
Nelson, Alison L., Doune Macdonald & Rebecca Abbott (2012) ?A risky business? Health and physical activity from the perspectives of urban Australian Indigenous young people,? Health, Risk & Society, 14:4, 325-40.
the quiz question:
1- What characterizes an Epicurean worldview, according to Klein?
Select one or more:
a. the idea that pleasure is taboo
b. the idea that excessive pleasure ruins one’s health
c. the view that each of us has to find our own way of being healthy
d. the idea that health is an aesthetic question
e. a concern with pleasure and its value
f. the idea that the origin of thought is the body
g. a view of the body as a mute machine
h. the belief that you think what you eat
i. Platonic idealism
j. A materialist conception of the world
2- Cheek describes the modern neoliberal world as one in which government (or “the state”) doesn?t row but instead steers. What does she mean by this, in the context of health?
Select one or more:
a. Individuals are encouraged to make their own choices around health, but can then be held responsible by government and others if those choices are seen to have negative outcomes
b. Governments provide particular health care services and individuals have few choices but must accept with the services they are given
c. Individuals are encouraged to make their own choices around health, but the array of choices available to them is shaped by the state
d. Governments no longer provide services such as health or medical care
3- Cheek comments ?we find an increase in the use of the language of transgression and metaphors such as sin, penance and forgiveness in the writing and thinking of health in contemporary societies?. Which of the following summarises what she is saying here?
Select one or more:
a. Religious groups are increasingly urging people to live a healthy lifestyle
b. Increasingly, people talk about their health using ideas about sin or penance
c. We can be forgiven for making unhealthy choices, since the temptation to live unhealthily is all around us
d. As our lifestyle has become more unhealthy in contemporary societies, we have more health issues to worry about and so are more likely to break the rules of healthy living.
4- Which of the following claims are made within the social model of disability, according to Conrad and Barker?
Select one or more:
a. Disability is a personal tragedy
b. Being disabled is a political rather than a medical issue
c. What counts as a disability varies across space and time
d. Disability cannot be equated with an individual’s medical condition.
e. Impairment is distinct from disability.
5- Several precursors to the social constructionist approach view the way experiences come to be labeled as medical conditions as (in part) a process of social control. Is this statement true or false, according to Conrad and Barker?
Select one:
a. False
b. True
6- Which of the following claims do Conrad and Barker make about subjective experiences of illness?
Select one or more:
a. Subjective accounts of illness are useful but offer less information than medical or epidemiological accounts of disease.
b. Subjective accounts tell us that individuals are not passive in the way they respond to illness.
c. Subjective experiences are taken seriously by social constructionist accounts of illness.
d. Subjective accounts of illness are limited by comparison to more analytical accounts because of their partiality
e. Subjective accounts of illness can be woven into a story or narrative by the person with the illness.
7- Which of the following statements is true of social constructionist accounts of illness, according to Conrad and Barker?
Select one or more:
a. The stigma associated with stigmatised illnesses may make people with that illness less likely to seek treatment.
b. It is easy to identify which illnesses will be stigmatised based on the profile of the underpinning disease
c. The stigma associated with an illness may be harder to manage than the symptoms of the condition
8- According to Conrad and Barker, the idea that ?reality does not just exist out there in the world waiting to be discovered? is associated with which of the following intellectual traditions?
Select one or more:
a. Positivism
b. Phenomenology
c. Social constructionism
9- According to Foucault, which of the following locations receive authoritarian medical intervention because of the view that diseases might flourish there and spread out into the wider population?
Select one or more:
a. Privileged suburbs
b. Hospitals
c. Ships in harbour
d. Prisons
e. Marketplaces
10- According to Foucault, how were health problems treated in Europe up until the end of the seventeenth century?
Select one or more:
a. Provision of medicines was bundled together with other services including distribution of food and clothing and care of abandoned children.
b. Care, including health care, was exclusively provided by religious organisations.
c. Most of the time, health problems were dealt with through general assistance to the poor.
d. Even when the plague threatened towns, states did nothing to specifically manage disease
e. People were only ever hospitalized when they were extremely ill and near death.
f. There were categories like the ?sick poor? or the ?necessitous pauper? to describe people who needed assistance of all kinds, including assistance with health matters.
11- What happens in response to the increasing population in Western Europe in the eighteenth century, according to Foucault?
Select one or more:
a. New strategies are developed for intervening in the behavior of the population, for example, through education, professional training or encouraging people to get married or have babies.
b. It becomes too difficult to intervene in the behavior of population, given its dramatic increase in size
c. The longevity and health of population becomes an important problem
d. New technologies of knowing about the population, such as demography, emerge.
e. The actions of government come to focus solely on the preservation and upkeep of the labour force
12- What ideas became popular in response to criticisms of hospitals in eighteenth century Europe, according to Foucault?
Select one or more:
a. The idea of medical staff being present throughout the population to treat people cheaply or for free
b. The idea of sick people being cared for in the home.
c. The idea of giving out or dispensing medicines to people who are not presently in hospital.
d. The idea that people should pay for their medical care to ensure better quality treatment.
e. The idea that hospitals should have a specialist role dealing with more complicated health problems, while the family should play the primary role in health care.
f. The idea that people should be segregated in specialist hospitals separated from main population centres.
13- Which of the following does Foucault consider to be features of the politics of health in the nineteenth century?
Select one or more:
a. The market as a mechanism for the buying and selling of medical services
b. Hygiene and illness coming to be managed through authoritarian interventions.
c. The institutionalization of a private doctor-patient relationship
14- What does Rose mean when he says ?medicine itself needs to be decomposed??
Select one or more:
a. Medicine is so dangerous we need to destroy its institutions
b. That different medical environments and activities ? for example, surgery or public health – can have different meanings and outcomes
c. The confidence and composure of people with medical power needs to be shaken
d. That medical people and institutions do not have one unified way of thinking about or doing things
15- What are some of the problems of the concept of medicalization, according to Rose?
Select one or more:
a. Rose suggests it doesn?t offer even a starting point for understanding the changes in practices in health that we see around us and so isn?t really useful at all.
b. Rose suggests that the concept of medicalisation doesn?t really explain how or why medical authority extends into new areas, or what the consequences of that process might be
c. Rose points out that the term ?medicalisation? implies that people who are medicalised are passive
d. Rose suggests that medicalisation can?t be used as a neutral term to describe issues that have become part of medicine, though they weren?t in the past
e. Rose argues that the concept of medicalisation obscures important differences between the way in which different medical activities or knowledges work
f. Rose proposes that the concept of medicalization doesn?t help us explain what might be wrong with designating a part of life a medical or health issue, when that part of life was thought about in a non-medical way before
16- Why does Rose talk about sewage systems in his article?
Select one or more:
a. Because sewage systems are an instance in which modern medicine moves beyond its legitimate areas of expertise
b. Because ways of disposing of sewage, along with cleaner water, careful disposal of corpses and other improvements in environmental health, have physically changed human bodies by extending lives and making people less ill
c. Because the disposal of sewage in modern western cities is an example of a practice which has negative consequences for human and environmental health
d. Because the development of sewers is one example of the ways that medical authority has for centuries played a role in shaping society beyond simply treating ill people
e. Because sewage systems are an example of areas of human life that have been shaped by medical authority
f. Because the role of medical expertise in the design of sewage systems suggests that doctors might be described as the earliest social scientists
17- Why does Topol mention Jeanette Erdmann in his book?
Select one or more:
a. To point out genome sequencing is underused in contemporary medicine because of its cost
b. To point out the vital importance of high tech medical technology like ventilators in improving the quality of life of patients
c. To point out that in conjunction with information available via digital and online media, patients are often able to self-diagnose
d. To point out that patients are often the experts on their own bodies and medical conditions
18- Which of the following are barriers to patients owning their own medical data mentioned by Topol?
Select one or more:
a. Medical paternalism
b. The economic value of individuals? medical data which means that corporations are unlikely to allow individuals control of their own data
c. The need for digital infrastructure for sharing data
d. Patients? lack of expertise that means they are unable to responsibly manage their own medical data
19- Tovey and colleagues discuss Anthony Giddens’ idea of the reflexive project of the self. Which of the following do they associate with this notion of reflexivity?
Select one or more:
a. Reliance on expertise to help us work out how to manage our personal lives
b. The self being continually redefined against changing circumstances
c. Ongoing consideration of the question of what to do and how to be
d. Anxiety and doubt
e. Reliance on abstract knowledge rather than direct advice
20- Why do Tovey and colleagues talk about sickle cell disorders and thalassaemia?
Select one or more:
a. To discuss important new drug treatments that are now available to people with sickle cell and thalassaemia
b. To point out that patient consumer involvement, in the form of collective action by minority ethnic groups, has helped to achieve improvements in health services for people with these conditions
c. To emphasise that user involvement in health services is not needed because of the careful planning that underpins the UK?s National Health Service
d. To emphasise the complexity of debates about user participation in health
e. To identify the fact that provision for people with sickle cell and thalassaemia has historically not been adequate, partly because the National Health Service has been used to catering for the needs of a predominantly white population
21- Which of the following do Hallin and Briggs cite as examples of the linear-reflectionist perspective?s concern with the distortion of scientific information?
Select one or more:
a. Walsh-Childers, Edwards and Grobmeyer?s article about magazines? accounts of breast cancer
b. Da Silva Madeiros and Massarami?s article about coverage of the H1N1 pandemic on Brazilian television
c. Jensen?s article about the coverage of cancer online and in the news media
d. Seale?s discussion of narratives of heroism in reporting of children with cancer
22- What do Hallin and Briggs mean by “pre-mediatization”, when discussing the context of health?
Select one:
a. The way media often prematurely release information about novel medical treatments before they are tested or widely available
b. The way the logic of the media comes to inform the way other groups go about tackling health problems
23- How do Hallin and Briggs understand the over-reporting of the H1N1 epidemic ?
Select one or more:
a. As a reflection of a culture gap between journalism and medicine
b. As an example of the limits of a view of health reporting as a representation of reality
c. As a deliberate outcome of attempts by disease control authorities to using media coverage to raise awareness and manage the epidemic
24- Ayo argues that governments have stepped back from intervening in the social determinants of health. What are the consequences of this, according to him?
Select one or more:
a. Both experts and corporations offer goods and services on the market for health consumers to buy
b. People are encouraged to be enterprising consumers in the pursuit of health
c. Citizens are left alone and unsupported to work out how to live a healthy life
d. An array of expert advice on dos and don?ts about health is made available to individuals
e. People are dissuaded from making their own choices around health
25- Which of the following criticisms does Ayo make of health promotion?
Select one or more:
a. That health promotion tends to encourage behaviours, such as eating vegetables or doing 30 minutes of exercise a day, which don?t really have an impact on your health
b. That the health promotion policies that are most supported are about individual behavior change, like improving diet and increasing exercise
c. That health promotion policy tends to ignore the significance of unemployment, poverty and lack of education on health
26- Which of the follow are ways in which neoliberal governmentality promotes health, according to Ayo?
Select one or more:
a. Encouraging individuals to be responsible for their own health
b. Encouraging individuals to follow the advice given by health promotion organisations
c. Making structural and social change to make the population healthier
27- Which of the following appropriately describes the ?healthy lifestyle? culture, according to Ayo?
Select one or more:
a. Impure
b. An example of a ?technology of the self?
c. Moralistic
d. Valuing responsibility
e. Unwise
f. Oriented towards prudence and hard work
28- In what historical contexts does Diprose see a pre-emptive model of risk as originating?
Select one or more:
a. Medical and environmental disasters in the 1920s
b. The Cold War of the 1960s and 1970s
c. The Boer War in the late 19th century
d. Terrorism since the 1970s
29- What are the features of a pre-emptive approach to risk, according to Diprose?
Select one or more:
a. The need to be in a constant state of readiness
b. A view that it is import to be pro-active in warding off threats
c. A perception of threats as being of high probability
d. An understanding that threats are incalculable and unpredictable but seen as imminent
e. A perception that harms are seen to be caused by human decisions or action
f. Optimism about the future
g. A perception that threats are easily predicted and prepared for
30- Drawing on the writing of Duff, Nelson and colleagues compare scientific and non-expert perceptions of risk. Which of the following statements would Nelson and colleagues agree with on this topic?
Select one or more:
a. Non-experts are aware of health warnings but consider and manage the risks to themselves by drawing on their own experiences
b. Non-experts are poorly informed about health risks and consequently do risky things
c. The observation that scientific accounts often suggest that in order to reduce health risks ordinary people need access to more education and information
d. Non-expert perceptions of risk are shaped by peoples? own views of whether those risks apply to them or are as serious as experts suggest
e. Scientific and non-expert understandings of risk both highlight the need for more education so people can engage in healthy behaviours
