Similarities and Differences between Acute Illness and Injury Narratives and Their Implications for Medical Sociology

Author: Rosenfeld, Dana

Source: Social Theory & Health, Volume 4, Number 1, February 2006 , pp. 64-84(21)

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Abstract:

This article compares the experiences of acute illness and injury episodes and suggests that sociology's heuristic division between them constitutes a failure to consider bodily disruption across epidemiological categories. An analysis of interviews with informants aged 19–72 years in which they described their worst illness and injury episodes uncovered the use of two interpretive frames to capture the severity of these crises. The phrase `so bad that' refers to the episode's practical effects, or what Bury (1991) termed an illness's `meaning as consequence,' while `so bad because' refers to the episode's symbolic salience – what Bury (1991) termed `meaning as significance.' While informants captured how disruptive these crises were (their meaning as consequence) in different ways, the reasons for their disruptiveness (their meaning as significance) were virtually identical: disruptions to the physical self, the social self, and the social setting. Medical sociology should thus reconsider its use of diagnostic categories whose primary purpose is to facilitate epidemiological studies and/or medical treatment regimens. To compile a sample using medical diagnostic criteria (eg, studying the experience of only one illness at a time) is to privilege the medical over the sociological – indeed, over the social itself.Social Theory & Health (2006) 4, 64–84. doi:10.1057/palgrave.sth.8700064

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.sth.8700064

Affiliations: 1: 1Department of Health and Social Care, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK., Email: Dana.Rosenfeld@rhul.ac.uk

Publication date: 2006-02-01