Parallel play in medical anthropology and medical sociology

In recent years, the disciplinary emphasis in the social sciences has been challenged, but barriers remain to multidisciplinary discourse. Scholars may examine similar problems or even use the same concepts, and neglect or overlook the work in sister disciplines. Developmental psychologists have identified a stage in child development called parallel play, characterized by children playing side-by-side but not interacting with one another. This article employs parallel play as a metaphor to describe the relationship between medical anthropology and medical sociology. Using recent Medical Anthropology Quarterly articles on “medicalization” and “the experience of illness” as illustrations, this article analyzes the causes and consequences of this disciplinary parallelism and suggests a rationale and mechanism of moving beyond this stage.