Decolonising medicine: what role will sociology and sociologists play?

In response to calls for medicine, sociology, the university, and healthcare to be decolonised, this article considers the role of sociologists working in medical education in decolonising medicine. Efforts to decolonise medicine have largely focussed on biomedical knowledge and practice, while work to decolonise sociology has under-explored issues of health or medicine. Sociology in medical education sits between these two lines of work and has yet to be thoroughly scrutinised through a decolonial lens. Consequently, we respond to (Bhambra’s in Critical times 4(1):73-89, 2021 and Meghji’s in Sociology 56(1): 131-147, 2021) invitation for all forms of scholarship, regardless of how critical they perceive themselves to be, to examine their histories and entanglements with colonialism and racism. We grapple with the history and contemporary practice of medical sociology, reviewing its disciplinary identity and relationships with medicine, sociology and medical education. We argue that, as sociologists in UK medical education, we have been socialised into an embattled position as ‘critical friend’ to medicine, and an ‘applied’, ergo lesser, form of sociology, requiring us to continually assert our relevance. In turn, this preoccupation has, until recently, prevented us from confronting our own colonial roots and entrenched white solipsism.