Department of Sociology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
J Health Soc Behav. 2021 Dec;62(4):493-511. doi: 10.1177/00221465211025963.
Link and Phelan's pioneering 1995 theory of fundamental causes urged health scholars to consider the macro-level contexts that "put people at risk of risks." Allied research on the political economy of health has since aptly demonstrated how institutions contextualize risk factors for health. Yet scant research has fully capitalized on either fundamental cause or political economy of health's allusion to power relations as a determinant of persistent inequalities in population health. I address this oversight by advancing a theory of health power resources that contends that power relations distribute and translate the meaning (i.e., necessity, value, and utility) of socioeconomic and health-relevant resources. This occurs through stratification, commodification, discrimination, and devitalization. Resurrecting historical sociological emphases on power relations provides an avenue through which scholars can more fully understand the patterning of population health and better connect the sociology of health and illness to the central tenets of the discipline.
林克和费伦 1995 年提出的基本原因理论，促使健康学者考虑将“使人们面临风险的”宏观层面背景。此后，关于健康政治经济学的联合研究恰当地展示了制度如何使健康风险因素背景化。然而，几乎没有研究充分利用基本原因或健康政治经济学的暗示，即权力关系是人口健康持续不平等的决定因素。我通过提出健康权力资源理论来解决这一忽视，该理论认为权力关系分配和转化社会经济和与健康相关资源的意义（即必要性、价值和效用）。这是通过分层、商品化、歧视和失去生命力来实现的。重新强调历史社会学对权力关系的重视，为学者提供了一个途径，使他们能够更全面地理解人口健康的模式，并更好地将健康和疾病社会学与该学科的核心原则联系起来。
