Is there a European medical sociology?

International audienceIs there a European sociology of health, illness and medicine – or, in short, a European medical sociology? While the answer to this question would certainly have been negative just a few years ago, this chapter argues that over the last thirty years a series of new analyses have emerged in the field which have laid the groundwork for a medical sociology at the European level. These examine how health issues are increasingly framed as consumer goods, public issues and existential concerns by a complex dynamics of global and local forces related to the globalization of scientific communication, the expansion of health markets and the wider circulation of individuals. The first part of the chapter discusses the institutional parameters that account for the development of medical sociology in the various European countries over the last fifty years. We then review the work conducted by European scholars regarding three major research issues present at the core of medical sociology throughout its history: the experience of illness and risk, the organization of medical work and the regulation of the production of biomedical entities