Bringing bodies - and health care - back in
Exploring practical knowledge for living with chronic disease
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48006/2358-0097/V9N1.E9S03Keywords:
practical knowledge, social theory, medicine, ethnographyAbstract
Social theory about people with disabilities or chronic disease mostly steers clear from medical practices and theories. This is how research is framed that is deemed relevant for the emancipation of people with disabilities: by providing a counter-discourse to assumed individualizing, oppressive and objectifying medical ways of approaching people with handicaps. In this paper, it is argued that the shrugging off of medical discourse comes at too high a prize: medical practices and physical bodies are ‘given away’ as objects of social theory. Ironically, this may lead to a strengthening of medical discourses, because they are not challenged by alternative concepts of living disabled or diseased bodies. Moreover, the knowledge of people with disabilities and chronic diseases have about their daily lives remains under-studied and under-valued, cutting off ways towards interesting social positions and strategies for the improvement of these positions. This paper explores the knowledge of people with disabilities or chronic disease as practical knowledge. What this practical knowledge might entail in daily life is illustrated from the practices of people with COPD, a severe and chronic lung condition.
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