Research into child abuse and its interpretation has been bedevilled by controversy over questions of definition and appropriate approaches. It is suggested in this paper that different questions require different approaches, and that the use of both sociological and medical models may be...

This Special Issue of Social Science & Medicine investigates the potential for positive inter-disciplinary interaction, a ‘generative dance’, between organization studies (OS), and two of the journal’s traditional disciplinary foundations: health policy and medical sociology. This is both...

Doctor/patient interaction has been the object of various reform efforts in Western countries since the 1960s. It has consistently been depicted as enacting relationships of dominance or oppression. Most younger medical practitioners have received interaction skills training during their...

Over the past 30 years Robert Dingwall has published an influential series of articles on the professions, especially law and medicine. This represents a substantial and coherent body of work in an important sub-discipline of sociology. This volume assembles the best of these writings in one...

ch. 1. The legacy of Parsons and Hughes -- ch. 2. Accomplishing profession -- ch. 3. 'Atrocity stories' and professional relationships -- ch. 4. 'In the beginning was the work.' reflections on the genesis of occupations -- ch. 5. 'A respectable profession'? Sociological and economic perspectives...