Sociology is the systematic study of society and social interaction. In order to carry out their studies, sociologists identify cultural patterns and social forces and determine how they affect individuals and groups. They also develop ways to apply their findings to the real world.
A critical sociologist might be interested in the power differentials present in the
regulation of food, exploring where people’s right to information intersects with
corporations’ drive for profit and how the government mediates those interests. Or a
critical sociologist might be interested in the power and powerlessness experienced
by local farmers versus large farming conglomerates. In the documentary Food Inc.,
the plight of farmers resulting from Monsanto’s patenting of seed technology is
depicted as a product of the corporatization of the food industry. Another topic of
study might be how nutrition varies between different social classes.
1.4. Why Study Sociology?
Figure 1.15. Tommy Douglas (1904-1986). As
premier of Saskatchewan Tommy Douglas introduced legislation for the first
publicly funded health care plan in Canada in 1961. Sociologist Bernard Blishen
(1919 – ) was the research director for the Royal Commission on Health Services
which drew up the plan for Canada’s national medicare program in 1964. (Photo
National Archives of Canada, C-036222)
When Bernard Blishen picked up the phone one day in 1961, he was surprised to
hear Chief Justice Emmett Hall on the other end of the line asking him to be the
research director for the newly established Royal Commission on Health Services.
Publicly funded health care had been introduced for the first time in Canada that
year by a socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) government in
Saskatchewan amid bitter controversy. Doctors in Saskatchewan went on strike and
private health care insurers mounted an expensive anti-public health care campaign.
Because it was a Conservative government commission, appointed by Prime
Minister John Diefenbaker, Blishen’s colleagues advised him that it was going to be
a whitewash document to defend the interests of private medical care. However,
Blishen took on the project as a challenge, and when the commission’s report was
published it advocated that the Saskatchewan plan be adopted nationally (Vaughan
2004).
Blishen went on to work in the field of medical sociology and also created a widely
used index to measure socioeconomic status known as the Blishen scale. He received
the Order of Canada in 2011 in recognition of his contributions to the creation of
public health care in Canada.
Since it was first founded, many people interested in sociology have been driven by
the scholarly desire to contribute knowledge to this field, while others have seen it
as way not only to study society, but also to improve it. Besides the creation of public
health care in Canada, sociology has played a crucial role in many important social
reforms such as equal opportunity for women in the workplace, improved treatment
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