Introduction: taking stock of medical dominance.

More than 20 years have elapsed since the book that is the subject of this special edition was published. The aim in this scene-setting introductory paper is to undertake a stock-taking of status of doctors, doctoring and professionalism as we head into the 21st century. It considers the various challenges to medical dominance of health systems including neo-liberalism and economic rationalism, a growth in consumerism and associated litigiousness, the change from a cottage industry basis to mass markets as medicine has been industrialised, the rise of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and changing roles of other health care professionals.

KEY WORDS

Medical dominance, sociology, professionalism, autonomy, authority, sovereignty.

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'A doctor is a doctor is a doctor'

AMA Vice President, Choong Sew Yong (1)

This special edition arose out of a competition held by the Australian Sociological Association in 2003 to determine, on the basis of voting by the more than 500 strong membership, the ten most influential books in the history of Australian Sociology (see Skrbis and Germov 2004). The most notable feature of the outcome was that the first four places were all occupied by one author (R. Connell) but sneaking in at number nine was the book, Medical Dominance (1983, rev. edn 1989).