Bringing the Global into Medical Sociology: Medicalization, Narrative, and Global Health.

The article advocates for the expansion of medical sociology through deeper engagement with global health, emphasizing the interconnectedness of medicalization, narrative, and global health scholarship. It traces the development of key sociological concepts—medicalization (the process by which medical authority extends over human conditions), biomedicalization, and pharmaceuticalization—and their critiques, particularly in global contexts. The narrative turn in medical sociology is highlighted for its role in understanding illness experiences, including the integration of visual materials as part of narrative analysis. The author presents global health as an emerging but underdeveloped focus within medical sociology, illustrating how local sites, such as hospitals in rural Maine, are embedded in transnational networks that shape health care and inequities worldwide. The article concludes by urging medical sociologists to integrate activism, narrative methods, and global perspectives to address contemporary health disparities and contribute to social change.