Health and illness lecture 5 term 2 – sociology of sleep
Recent focus of sociology, last 2 decades (roughly) body of work on sociology of sleep.
1) Sleep is a human universal – biological basis, everybody sleeps
2) Considerable social variability – based on norms, expectations, social interactions.
- Universal and fundamentally social.
Objectives
Sleep – a significant aspect of social life
What is sleep? Biological and social perspectives
Historical, geographical cultural variations in sleep
Negotiating sleep – norms, expectations
Towards a sociology of sleep: Biomedical v social model? Medicalisation?
Pharmaceuticalisation? Social inequalities of sleep? Risk to health? Public health
issue?
Durkheim (e.g) – social norms and patterning of sleep.
Social inequalities – who gets more or less sleep, and the quality of sleep.
Brings together private and public, biological and social, individual and collective
Sleep is affected by wider socioeconomic changes – Crarey J (2014) in a 24.7 society we are
no longer sleeping – capitalism, changes to post-industrial capitalism
Factory workers – 12-hour shifts, disruption of sleep fitting in with the natural rhythms of
day and night, but based on economic changes, sleep is based on the demands of capitalism
Sleep loss, sleep deficit is associated with.. Decreased cognitive performance
Impaired driving, Poorer moral judgement, Impaired immune function, Elevated
cortisol levels, Increased risk depression, Diabetes, Obesity
Moral panic associated with sleep?
How we sleep of an interplay between the biological and sociological self. Need to think in
both ways to understand it.
‘Biological’ self – sleep determined by circadian rhythms, ageing, health – sleep as
physiological or individual
‘Social’ self – sleep determined by our roles and relationships (eg. with others and
our environment) – sleep as interactional or shared
What is sleep? No one knows
Special activity of the brain controlled by elaborate mechanisms
Brain passes through a cycle of stages made up of
o Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep – brain very active
o Long-wave non-REM sleep – brain relatively inactive
Competing theories and explanations
Biomedical sciences
Sleep in labs or sleep clinics,
‘Objective’, quantitative methods to collect data eg. clinical trials, actigraphy, EEG
recordings etc
, Participants, mostly young men, carefully screened – others excluded from studies
often on the basis of sex, age, illness, use of contraceptives, HRT, other medication….
Objective, inside the body
This is only a partial picture – biomed of the ideal, typical pattern of sleeping, may
not suit the wider population.
Important knowledge, but not the full picture – thought of as something which goes on in
the brain, but if literature research is focused on this it contributes to a medicalisation of
sleep, that sleep is just a clinical, biomedical problem (Williams et al, 3013:41) – biomedical
treatments, within the realms of the individual – CBT, tablets
Biomedical view of sleep
As with other aspects of health and illness, biomedicine has been dominant
paradigm framing our knowledge and understandings of sleep
Sleep as a physiological process, located ‘within the body’
Consumer culture, marketing, medicalisation and pharmaceuticalisation of sleep
If it is a biomedical issue, there becomes space for those who want to sell sleep
conceptualised in this way – sleeping tablets, pharmisuticalisaiton
Sleep hygiene – go to bed at the same time, rituals and routines for sleep, need
exercise and fresh air – health promotion type discourses – sociologists critical of
Western ideas for sleep – assumes you sleep in a bed, 8 hours a night, sleep in a certain type
of way, but, the sleep hygiene is only one way of sleeping..
Cultural variations of sleep
Marcel Mauss (anthropologist ‘Body Techniques’) war taught him to sleep anywhere
– trenches
Masai in Kenya - sleep standing up
Variation between time, place, and who with …
Sleep cultures
Monophasic nocturnal sleep pattern – norm in Northern Europe and America
Biphasic sleep patterns e.g. ‘siesta’
Polyphasic sleeping cultures –flexibility around social roles, duties, obligations etc
(China, India, Japan) shorter bursts of sleep, naps.
Globalisation and sleep: Transition from industrial to post-industrial – service economy
Emergence and legitimating the ‘work place nap’
Service economy requires workers to be:
o Alert (not just mindless factory work), friendly too
o Sleeping on the job can be regulated
o Flexible workers
o Something you would’ve been sacked for it now being encouraged
o China – more accepting of daytime sleep, but in those settings of increasing
manufacturing-based economy, daytime sleep was no longer allowed. 12-
hour shifts, no sleep. Naps are lost production
Recent focus of sociology, last 2 decades (roughly) body of work on sociology of sleep.
1) Sleep is a human universal – biological basis, everybody sleeps
2) Considerable social variability – based on norms, expectations, social interactions.
- Universal and fundamentally social.
Objectives
Sleep – a significant aspect of social life
What is sleep? Biological and social perspectives
Historical, geographical cultural variations in sleep
Negotiating sleep – norms, expectations
Towards a sociology of sleep: Biomedical v social model? Medicalisation?
Pharmaceuticalisation? Social inequalities of sleep? Risk to health? Public health
issue?
Durkheim (e.g) – social norms and patterning of sleep.
Social inequalities – who gets more or less sleep, and the quality of sleep.
Brings together private and public, biological and social, individual and collective
Sleep is affected by wider socioeconomic changes – Crarey J (2014) in a 24.7 society we are
no longer sleeping – capitalism, changes to post-industrial capitalism
Factory workers – 12-hour shifts, disruption of sleep fitting in with the natural rhythms of
day and night, but based on economic changes, sleep is based on the demands of capitalism
Sleep loss, sleep deficit is associated with.. Decreased cognitive performance
Impaired driving, Poorer moral judgement, Impaired immune function, Elevated
cortisol levels, Increased risk depression, Diabetes, Obesity
Moral panic associated with sleep?
How we sleep of an interplay between the biological and sociological self. Need to think in
both ways to understand it.
‘Biological’ self – sleep determined by circadian rhythms, ageing, health – sleep as
physiological or individual
‘Social’ self – sleep determined by our roles and relationships (eg. with others and
our environment) – sleep as interactional or shared
What is sleep? No one knows
Special activity of the brain controlled by elaborate mechanisms
Brain passes through a cycle of stages made up of
o Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep – brain very active
o Long-wave non-REM sleep – brain relatively inactive
Competing theories and explanations
Biomedical sciences
Sleep in labs or sleep clinics,
‘Objective’, quantitative methods to collect data eg. clinical trials, actigraphy, EEG
recordings etc
, Participants, mostly young men, carefully screened – others excluded from studies
often on the basis of sex, age, illness, use of contraceptives, HRT, other medication….
Objective, inside the body
This is only a partial picture – biomed of the ideal, typical pattern of sleeping, may
not suit the wider population.
Important knowledge, but not the full picture – thought of as something which goes on in
the brain, but if literature research is focused on this it contributes to a medicalisation of
sleep, that sleep is just a clinical, biomedical problem (Williams et al, 3013:41) – biomedical
treatments, within the realms of the individual – CBT, tablets
Biomedical view of sleep
As with other aspects of health and illness, biomedicine has been dominant
paradigm framing our knowledge and understandings of sleep
Sleep as a physiological process, located ‘within the body’
Consumer culture, marketing, medicalisation and pharmaceuticalisation of sleep
If it is a biomedical issue, there becomes space for those who want to sell sleep
conceptualised in this way – sleeping tablets, pharmisuticalisaiton
Sleep hygiene – go to bed at the same time, rituals and routines for sleep, need
exercise and fresh air – health promotion type discourses – sociologists critical of
Western ideas for sleep – assumes you sleep in a bed, 8 hours a night, sleep in a certain type
of way, but, the sleep hygiene is only one way of sleeping..
Cultural variations of sleep
Marcel Mauss (anthropologist ‘Body Techniques’) war taught him to sleep anywhere
– trenches
Masai in Kenya - sleep standing up
Variation between time, place, and who with …
Sleep cultures
Monophasic nocturnal sleep pattern – norm in Northern Europe and America
Biphasic sleep patterns e.g. ‘siesta’
Polyphasic sleeping cultures –flexibility around social roles, duties, obligations etc
(China, India, Japan) shorter bursts of sleep, naps.
Globalisation and sleep: Transition from industrial to post-industrial – service economy
Emergence and legitimating the ‘work place nap’
Service economy requires workers to be:
o Alert (not just mindless factory work), friendly too
o Sleeping on the job can be regulated
o Flexible workers
o Something you would’ve been sacked for it now being encouraged
o China – more accepting of daytime sleep, but in those settings of increasing
manufacturing-based economy, daytime sleep was no longer allowed. 12-
hour shifts, no sleep. Naps are lost production
