Activities per year
Abstract
West Central Scotland and Glasgow exhibit a range of unenviable health outcomes – including low life expectancy, pronounced health inequalities and substantial ‘excess mortality’. Previously, the authors have contributed to work highlighting the socio-historical and political processes shaping these health outcomes, and have demonstrated, based on research in government archives, the awareness amongst policy makers within Scotland in the 1970s of the underlying causal processes. This paper further develops the findings from new archival research covering the period 1979-1992, and shows how policy makers moved to embrace a view of social problems, including health, as reflective of a ‘dependency culture’ from which individuals and communities needed to be ‘liberated’- via housing tenure change, local government reform, community participation in ‘regeneration partnerships’ and the inculcation of ‘entrepreneurial spirit’. Ultimately, poor health outcomes were to be seen as reflective of the failure of individuals to respond appropriately. Notwithstanding the trenchant adherence to this view amongst leading politicians, some policy makers from the later 1980s, faced with a growing body of countervailing evidence from areas of multiple deprivation, sought to encourage a more ‘holistic’ approach along the lines of other European countries. The paper will show how this was to prove to be a ‘false dawn’ for the re-emergence of the view of health as ‘socially determined’, and will present a Simmellian/ Polanyian perspective on how the public policy of this period contributed to intensifying issues of both social deprivation and health in the region, and in the city of Glasgow in particular.
Original language | English |
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Publication status | Published - 13 Sept 2017 |
Event | British Sociological Association Medical Sociology Conference 2017 - University of York, York, United Kingdom Duration: 13 Sept 2017 → 15 Sept 2017 https://www.acss.org.uk/news/bsa-medical-sociology-conference-2017-call-papers/ |
Conference
Conference | British Sociological Association Medical Sociology Conference 2017 |
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Abbreviated title | MedSoc 2017 |
Country/Territory | United Kingdom |
City | York |
Period | 13/09/17 → 15/09/17 |
Internet address |
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'The Politics of Health in Scotland, 1979-1992: ‘Personal responsibility’ and the ‘false dawn’ of social determination'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Activities
- 1 Invited talk
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The social and political determination of health in contemporary Glasgow: Findings from the Scottish Office archive
Collins, C. (Speaker)
9 Jan 2018Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk
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Research output
- 1 Paper
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Glasgow’s ‘intangible cultural heritage': ‘Workers City’ and the European City of Culture
Collins, C. & Levitt, I., 14 May 2018.Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper