Journal
JOURNAL OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
Volume 62, Issue 4, Pages 493-511Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/00221465211025963
Keywords
fundamental causes; health inequalities; political economy of health; power relations
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This passage discusses the importance of power relations in shaping population health inequalities, proposing a theory of health power resources that highlights how power influences the distribution and translation of resources relevant to health and socioeconomic status. Resurrecting historical sociological emphases on power relations is seen as a way to better understand health disparities and connect sociology of health and illness to broader disciplinary principles.
Link and Phelan's pioneering 1995 theory of fundamental causes urged health scholars to consider the macro-level contexts that put people at risk of risks. Allied research on the political economy of health has since aptly demonstrated how institutions contextualize risk factors for health. Yet scant research has fully capitalized on either fundamental cause or political economy of health's allusion to power relations as a determinant of persistent inequalities in population health. I address this oversight by advancing a theory of health power resources that contends that power relations distribute and translate the meaning (i.e., necessity, value, and utility) of socioeconomic and health-relevant resources. This occurs through stratification, commodification, discrimination, and devitalization. Resurrecting historical sociological emphases on power relations provides an avenue through which scholars can more fully understand the patterning of population health and better connect the sociology of health and illness to the central tenets of the discipline.
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