An Emergent Sociology of Global Health and Development

Abstract

Sociologists have much to contribute to the study of global health and development. Our discipline's fundamental concerns with power and inequality uniquely position us to leverage theoretical, conceptual, substantive, and empirical insights for the understanding of engines, outcomes, and processes of global health and development. This special issue highlights the diversity and depth of sociological engagements with the topics of global health and development. In this introduction to this special issue, I briefly outline how sociologists have approached the study of global health and development despite the fact that this is a nascent and not yet fully coalesced field. While medical sociologists and political sociologists have historically studied these topics, they have also marginalized them. Exciting sociological research is, however, underway. The challenge is in ensuring that scholarship on global health and development is in conversation across subfields in order to propel research on global health and development forward, both substantively and theoretically.