Introduction

Abstract

This volume is a contribution from within the sociology of knowledge to on-going debates about the history of sociology, about the way academic disciplines are formed, and how resilient they might be in the face of rapid (and radical) changes in the university environment. It poses questions about sociologists – the people who inhabit the discipline – and the work they do. It furnishes answers to such questions through a comparative study of the discipline in three countries, offering a history of the sociology of health and medicine and an investigation of the current terrain of this speciality field.