Marx, Critical Realism, and Health Inequalities

Abstract

Much of the research on health inequalities purporting to be sociological is, in fact, socio-epidemiological. Its restricted focus is on the statistical relationship between assorted socio-economic classifications (SECs) and health and longevity rather than on “classical” sociological issues concerning the nature and salience of capitalism and its contradictions. While this focus has a return for sociology (Wright 2009), its emphasis on SECs has largely displaced consideration of the role of class relations and political power in producing, reproducing and exacerbating health inequalities. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult not to see sociology’s recent published literature on health inequalities as itself the product of a post-1970s neo-liberal ideology owing much to what we shall refer to henceforth as a radically altered class/command dynamic (Scambler 2012).