- •Introduction
- •242 Michael p. Kelly and David Field
- •1984) Or directly address the interactions between physical and social
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- •244 Michael p. Kelly and David Field
- •Variability, the interaction with the environment and the meanings
- •The body and illness
- •Into conceptions of self and are likely to become a basis for the imputation
- •1970, Garfinkel 1967). That the interaction between someone who is sick
- •© Blackwell Publishers Ltd/Editorial Board 1996
- •252 Michael p. Kelly and David Field
- •O Blackwell Publishers Ltd/Editorial Board 1996
- •256 Michael p. Kelly and David Field
- •Voysey, m. (1975) a Constant Burden: The Reconstitution of Eamily Life.
- •O BlackweU Publishers Ltd/Editorial Board 1996
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd/Editorial Board 1996
Chronic Illness and the Body 243
vide for the means of 'doing' the sodal construction and mediation
(Armstrong 1983, Foucault 1973, Shilling 1993, Turner 1992).
It is probably the case that these tendencies have been reinforced in
medical sociology from Parsons onwards (Parsons 1951a 1951b) by the
influence of accounts of psychological illness. Parsons* insistence on treating
illness as a form of deviance took the sick role into a moral realm.
Indeed in his discussion of the sick role in The Social System (1951a) he
was strongly influenced by his interests in psychoanalysis. During the
1960s and 1970s many other writers were also fascinated by psychiatric
problems as an arena in which to do medical sociology (Goffman 1970,
Lemert 1962, Rose 1962, SchefF 1966). More recently, as medical sociology
has expanded its range of interests, the disorders which have
attracted particular attention have not infrequently been the more exotic
ones (Conrad 1976, Conrad and Schneider 1980). Epilepsy has received a
great deal of attention for example (Jacoby 1994, Scambler and Hopkins
1986, Scambler 1989, West 1986). Intractable illnesses about which medicine
can do little by way of alleviation have also been prominent in medical
sociology. In this latter respect terminal illness (Field 1989, Hockey
1990) and espedally cancer (Glaser and Strauss 1965, Mclntosh 1977,
Schou 1993), rheumatoid arthritis (Locker 1983, Wiener 1975, Williams
1984), multiple sclerosis (Robinson, 1988), and Parkinson's disease
(Pinder, 1990) spring to mind. Conversely, common illnesses which in
terms of incidence, prevalence and caseload are those which preoccupy
most general medical practitioners are less well represented in the sociological
cannon. For example, in recent years disorders like gall bladder
disease, ulcers, back pain, stroke, and bronchitis pale into significance
sociologically, compared to studies of AIDS/HIV (Field and Woodman
1990, Barbour and Van TeijHngen 1994). Even where writers have
focused on the apparently physical, as in the case of pain, it is the cognitive
mediation and interpretation of pain (Bendelow 1993, Kotarba 1983)
or the ways in which professionals make sense of it (Baszanger 1992)
which is of sociological interest, rather than the bodily experience of pain
itself. That is, the meanings of pain are given precedence over its physical
restrictions and discomforts - even though it is precisely these which have
greatest weight in shaping interpretations and the attribution of meaning
by sufferers.
Biological contingencies and human sociality
The neglect of the physical or 'lived' body by medical sociologists reflects
the widespread lack of attention to normal bodily experiences in everyday
life by sociology more generally. The purpose of this section is to outline
some of the considerable amount of relevant literature in order to ground
our subsequent discussion and to indicate our starting points. The
e BlackweU Publishers Ltd/Editorial Board 1996