18 Nov Part One: Identifications

Part One: Identifications (Approximate length: 1-2 sentences per ID) 6 pts. x 5 IDs  30%

For each of the five concepts below, please provide a brief definition/explanation – in your own words – of what the concept means. For each concept, please also provide an example from our course materials that helps to illustrate the concept being defined. Thank you!

1.) Eugenics

2.) Genetic Fallacy 

3.) Social Health Gradient/Social Health Ladder

4.) Reflexivity 

5.) ‘Medicine as Social Science’ (Hint: this is not a discrete term so much as a broader concept/theme we’ve been exploring across various weeks – a brief explanation works as a ‘definition’)

Part Two: Short Answers (Approximate Length: 2-4 paragraphs) 35 pts. x 2 questions 70%

Please answer the following two short answer prompts. 

Please be sure that each response addresses each component of the prompt. 

Prompt #1

1.) After our first midterm, we’ve explored the concept of biological determinism/essentialism in relation to a series of social identities, categories, and experiences. 

Please explain what biological determinism is – how might we define this concept? What are the assumptions and the logic/reasoning that informs biological determinist arguments?

Then, please consider what real or potential consequences might result from applying a biological determinist approach to the study of race, ethnicity, sex and/or gender. 

Finally, please identify real and potential critiques that have been or might be made with respect to biological determinist arguments from a medical perspective? (Hint: Considering social constructionist understandings of categories/classifications may be helpful here by contrast).

When answering prompt 1, please be sure to include at least two specific examples from our course materials that serve as examples or otherwise help to illustrate the arguments being made. 

Prompt 2

In Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness, Ehrenreich and English explore aspects of the U.S. medical professional landscape circa 1865-1920 (and beyond). Their central ‘big picture’ punchline is that gender has/does intersect with class/socioeconomic status (SES) and race. These intersections are patterned such that particular groups of women are conceptualized, understood, valued, and (mis)treated in particular ways vis-à-vis other women and others in society.

By way of our Complaints and Disorders reading, please identify and elaborate upon some of the assumptions and actions of historically held and/or taken by U.S. medical professionals with respect to:

1.) upper and upper-middle class women (3 examples) and

 2.) lower-class and poor women (3 examples)

In other words, please elaborate upon three ways that U.S. medical professionals have historically conceptualized, explained and/or treated upper-class women and three ways that U.S. medical professionals have historically conceptualized, explained and/or treated lower-class women. (Total of six examples)