Abstract
The materialist thread within health sociology has observed a clear gradient linking inequalities in health with measures of social class and poverty. More recently, Bourdieu's approach to social class complemented the 'economic capital' of Marxist analysis with 'symbolic' capitals such as 'social' and 'cultural'. However, efforts to assess how symbolic capital interacts with health disparities reveal complex or contradictory effects. In this paper, we re-materialise the study of health and social position via a new materialist focus on the interactions between humans and non-human matter (NHM). We analyse empirical data to disclose the range of human/NHM interactions in daily life, and how these affect people's health status. These interactions establish physical, psychological and social opportunities and constraints on what human bodies can do, contributing to relative advantages and disadvantages. We argue for a revised materialist understanding of sociomaterial position as constituted by a 'thousand tiny dis/advantages', and suggest that health and wellbeing are inextricably linked to dis/advantage.
Highlights
SOCIAL CLASS AND HEALTH FROM HISTORICAL MATERIALISM TO SYMBOLIC CAPITAL.This paper reports data from an empirical study that addresses a gap in the sociological literature on social position and health disparities
Villalonga-Olives and Kawachi (2017) perceived a ‘dark side’ to social capital, in which a ‘social contagion’ of unhealthy behaviours could emerge in highly networked groups, especially among young people. Such conflicting findings raise questions about what part symbolic capital plays in the production of health disparities. We argue that this latter ‘cultural turn’ distracts attention prematurely from the wide range of daily interactions that humans have with a vast range of non-human matter (NHM) – from houses and their contents, motor vehicles and work tools/technologies through
These findings suggest a very different perspective on both the production of social position and its interaction with health and wellbeing from that offered in other contemporary approaches
Summary
SOCIAL CLASS AND HEALTH FROM HISTORICAL MATERIALISM TO SYMBOLIC CAPITAL.This paper reports data from an empirical study that addresses a gap in the sociological literature on social position and health disparities. For Scambler (2007: 299), the social relations between capital and labour ‘underwrite’ health inequalities These relations have become more polarised as globalisation and neoliberalisation of markets reduced working class control of the labour process, decimated welfare systems and increased wealth inequalities within and between national economies: all of which contribute to disparities between rich and poor (Coburn, 2004; Navarro & Shi, 2001; Scambler, 2012: 143). This association between societal income inequality and health disparities is strongly supported by empirical data comparing a range of global North jurisdictions (Pickett & Wilkinson, 2015: 317). For a detailed critique see Dorling, 2015)
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