BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE

SOCIAL AND BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE

Social Context of Medicine

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Medicine and social science are concerned in their own special way with human behaviour. The term ” social science” is applied to those discipline which are committed to the scientific examination of human behaviour. These are economic , political science, sociology, social psychology and social and social anthropology. Trie term ‘ behaviour science’ is applied to the last three , i.e sociology, social psychology an social anthropology, beacuse they deal directly with human behaviour. Each of these disciplines, while sharing the major goals of social sciences, i.e the scientific examination of human behaviour, deals with specific aspects of public health in the study of man.

a) ECONOMIC:

The feild of economic has a very close relationship with sociology. It is the parent discipline from which sociology has emerged. Economic deals with human relationship in the specific context of production, distribution, consumption and ownership of scarce resources, goods and services. Sociology and economic overlap in many senses; both are concerned with interdependence in human relationship

 

b) POLITICAL SCIENCE:

Historically economic and political science tended to be a single discipline. As a separate discipline, political science is concerned with the study of the system of laws and institutions which constitute government of whole societies

 

c) SOCIOLOGY:

Sociology deals with the study of human relationship and human behaviour for a better understanding of the Patten of human life ,  It is also concerned with the effects on the on the individual of the ways in which other individuals think and act.

 

d) SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY:

This displine sprang from psychology. It is concerned with the psychology of individual living in human society or group. The emphasis is on understanding the basic of perception, throught , opinion, attitudes, general! movation and learning in individual and how these vary in human societies and group. In other words, it is deals with the effects of social environment on person, their attitudes arid motivation.

 

e) ANTHROPOLOGY:

The world anthropology is derived from the root words, anthropos meaning man and logos meaning science, It is the study of the physical, social and cultural history of man. The study of human evaluation, racial differences, inheritance of bodily traits, growth and decay of the human organism is called physical anthropology. The study of the development and various types of social life is called social anthropology. The study of the total way of life of contemporary primitive man, his ways of thinking, felling and action is called cultural anthropology. Of all the science, which study various aspects of man , anthropology is one which comes nearest to being a total study of man. Medical anthropology, deals with the cultural component in the ecology of healthy and Disease.