The Sociology of Health and Healing

Connecting a sociology of childhood perspective with the study of child health, illness and wellbeing: introduction

“…In a sociological approach to health, health care is recognised as part of a social process, carried out in the public domain by paid professionals and privately by unpaid, lay carers (Stacey 1988). Health may also be understood variously; for example, professional beliefs may differ from lay beliefs, adult beliefs may differ from children's beliefs and all are variously influenced by a range of factors.…”

“…A further consideration is how agency is bounded in intergenerational relations; while the focus of this issue is on children, the role of parents as mediators and facilitators in the healthcare division of labour (Stacey 1988, Mayall 1996) cannot be underestimated. Further, health, we argue, can be understood only by locating children as embodied beings (Bendelow 2009) in different social and cultural contexts.…”

Complexity theory and tourism policy research

“…He claims that complexity theory is focussed on the "internal sub-system of complex systems while chaos theory" studies "…the external system of complex systems" (2001:3). Stacey (2003) contrasts the approaches adopted by chaos and complexity theorists claiming that the former are 4 often looking for an overall 'blueprint' for the whole system whilst the latter are more likely to model agent interaction at the local level.…”

“…Chaos and complexity theory are often discussed in a manner that suggests they are interchangeable and identical, however Byrne (2001), Haynes (2001) Harvey (2001) Mitleton-Kelly (1998) and Stacey (2003) claim they are not the same. Haynes (2001) contends that complexity theory has developed from, and uses the language of, chaos but has adopted different methods of research.…”

“…Harvey, 2001, Haynes 2001) and has involved sharing and borrowing ideas from those disciplines. Research by Medd, 2001a, Stacey (2003 and Healey (2007) indicates that there is a growing gap between natural and social science in terms of understanding complexity, and debate about modelling complex interaction in social or human systems.…”