This 300-level lecture course provides students with an introduction to central topics in the sociology of health and illness. Students will engage with, apply, and critique social determinants of health, fundamental cause theory, cultural health capital, social construction of illness, and social identities and health. Considerable efforts will be made throughout the course to apply these topics using two of the most critical empirical cases of our time: the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. It is also designed to help students develop skills in critical thinking via reading and reflecting on these topics and their engagement in articles reporting empirical research and in the media. We will examine key issues and critical debates in both Canadian and international contexts.
Next offered: 2026-2027 Winter Term 2 (Jan-Apr)
Climate change is exacerbating the severity and patterning of extreme weather hazards that cause disasters. At the same time, population settlement patterns and infrastructural investments are rendering more groups at risk of exposure, with key consequences for population mortality, morbidity, migration, and fertility. In this joint advanced undergraduate and graduate-level seminar, we examine the interrelationship between climate change, disasters, and population processes, using both sociological and demographic perspectives. Course content focuses on both the population causes of climate change and related disasters, and on the population consequences of disasters. The readings encompass both theoretical and empirical work. Particular attention will be paid to social inequalities along axes of race/ethnicity/indigeneity, socioeconomic status, and gender, and to methodological innovations, such as the use of remotely sensed data, spatial data, social media data, and administrative data.
Next offered: 2026-2027 Winter Term 2 (Jan-Apr)
How do environmental factors like air and water quality, extreme weather events, and features of the built and natural environment affect our health or even when and how we die? How do contemporary and historical sociospatial processes influence health equity? This course, which satisfies the Arts Place & Power requirement for undergraduate degrees, introduces students to sociological perspectives on environmental determinants of morbidity and mortality across the life course with an emphasis on British Columbia, Canada. Students will examine how environmental amenities and hazards’ structure lifestyle opportunities and choices that ultimately affect population well-being and inequality in health across groups. Connections are made throughout the course between these factors, systems of power, and structures of inequality. Additional emphasis is on the theoretical and empirical implications of place and space in environmental health research in sociology, giving students the opportunity to think critically about the contestation of place in British Columbia. Students will learn to core concepts and theories in the study of environmental determinants of health, including political economies of place, life coures perspectives, constructionist perspectives, and ecosocial theories of health inequity. We supplement academic articles spanning the fields of sociology, environmental epidemiology, and social demography with other resources, such as podcasts, media articles, and documentaries. The course outline is organized around four questions: How do environmental conditions become health outcomes? Why can the same environmental hazard have unequal health consequence? How are hazardous environments socially produced? And How are environmental harms recognized, contested, and governed?
Next offered: 2026-2027 Winter Term 1 (Sept-Dec)