UNSPECIFIED (2000) Chronic illness as biographical disruption or biographical disruption as chronic illness? Reflections on a core concept. SOCIOLOGY OF HEALTH & ILLNESS, 22 (1). pp. 40-67. ISSN 0141-9889

Abstract

Taking as its point of departure Bury's (1982) concept of chronic illness as biographical disruption, this paper provides a critical assessment of its fortunes since that time. Having 'rescued' the concept from recent postmodern and disability critiques, the paper provides a series of further reflections on its strengths and weaknesses, including the notion of 'normal illness'; the importance of timing and context; the significance of continuity as well, as loss; and the role of biographical disruption itself in the aetiology of illness. This, in turn, provides the basis for a broader set of reflections on the vicissitudes of the biographically embodied self in conditions of late modernity: a situation of chronic reflexivity in which our badies/selves are continually problematised if not pathologised. The paper concludes, given this 'balance sheet', with a discussion of some potentially fruitful lines of future research, including links with the life-events and inequalities literature.

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